Has Tesla been disrupted by traditional car makers selling electric vehicles in Europe?

Tesla disrupted the automotive world by showing that electric cars could be high performance and desirable machines. Elon Musk even said his main goal is to get other automakers to follow Tesla’s path before they become the world’s most valuable automaker. We don’t know if Musk still has the same currency, but European electric vehicle sales figures show his wish has been granted. Additionally, it reveals that the Disruptor may have been disturbed.

It was with this question that Matthias Schmidt, of Schmidt Automotive Research, shared the above graphic in a tweet.

As you can see, Tesla started to dominate the EV market in Europe in October 2019. Until then, the highest EV volumes came from Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi, the three companies that Carlos Ghosn tried. to stick with an alliance that has almost become a merger.

From that point on, Tesla’s sales in the Old Continent increased to peak in December 2019 and January 2020, when sales leveled off until March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit the world. Europe. Sales then began to decline.

Between August and September, Tesla was overtaken by the alliance and also by the Volkswagen group. The VW ID.3 was introduced in early September and sales continued to increase for the German automaker and Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi.

Tesla ended 2020 with around 96,000 cars sold in Europe, a number quite close to that presented by Hyundai and Kia, at around 95,000 units. Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi have sold around 135,000 electric vehicles and the Volkswagen Group sold 175,000 electric cars last year.

In the graph, we can see that one of the reasons for the push by traditional car makers to sell electric vehicles is because of the requirement to reach 95g of CO2 per kilometer. As we mentioned in a previous article, the Volkswagen Group started selling the ID.3 before its software was fully developed in an attempt to avoid a fine. Although he sold a lot of EVs, the effort was not enough to avoid the penalty.

You can see the graph shows data from 18 European markets (those prior to EU enlargement in 2004), Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and, if in doubt because of Brexit , also from the United Kingdom. We asked Schmidt the reason for this.

We also asked the author of the graph what he thinks was the reason Tesla’s sales declined when those of traditional automakers selling electric vehicles increased. A Tesla supporter claimed this was due to supply issues, but other commentators said the company wouldn’t cut prices if it could sell the same car elsewhere for more money.

If the disruptor was disrupted in Europe, it could be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic or limited to 2020. Would the same be true with the Giga Berlin delivering cars? Wouldn’t Tesla need an ID.3-size electric vehicle – something smaller than the Model Y – to be successful in Europe?

All of the traditional car makers that have sold more electric vehicles than Tesla have European factories for these cars. At this point, all we can do is debate the reasons and guess what will happen after Tesla starts producing cars in Germany. Place your bets.