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-   -   Tesla is losing market-share in USA & Europe (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/electric-cars/282967-tesla-losing-market-share-usa-europe.html)

In the first half of 2024, Tesla's US sales fell eight percent. It's worse in Europe with a 13-percent drop.

-European demand for BEVs slowed in H1 as Tesla and Volkswagen lost ground to BMW and Chinese OEMs

-During H1 2024, total registrations increased more than the volume of BEVs
SUVs, compact cars, vans, and sports cars were drivers of growth

-Tesla and Ford recorded the only volume drops over the period

- In Europe, the brand's volume fell from 185,200 units in the first half of 2023 to 161,300 units for the same period in 2024. However, during that same timeframe, total EV registrations increased by 1.7 percent.

- Tesla's market share in the European BEV market fell from 19.8 percent to 17.2 percent this year. Tesla was the carmaker with the second-highest decline in BEV market share in Europe through the first six months of 2024, behind only the Volkswagen Group, which fell from 22 percent to 18.7 percent.

-Tesla and Volkswagen lost ground to the Geely Group, which was boosted by the solid results of the Volvo EX30, and the BMW Group, which continues to reap success with its latest models. Chinese brands also grew, mainly thanks to BYD.

-The situation in the United States is similar. Tesla's sales volume dropped from 324,900 units in the first half of 2023 to 299,200 units this year. Meanwhile, overall, BEV sales increased by 7.6 percent in the same period

-Tesla's share dropped from 59.8 percent in 2023 to 51.2 percent in 2024. (US)

- Numerous competitors posted strong gains amid Tesla's losses. Hyundai increased 34 percent, while Ford saw a 48 percent increase. Rivian was even better at 77 percent, and Kia managed a 110-percent jump.

- In Europe, competition is coming on strong. In Europe, Tesla is feeling pressure from premium German brands and the Chinese industry.

- Ford, the Koreans, and Rivian are coming on strong in the US.

-The company's newest vehicle, the Cybertruck, hasn’t really taken off in terms of sales with just 11,300 sold in the US through the first half of 2024.

-The price cuts that worked so well in 2023 aren't so attractive now. As more EVs come to market from other brands, increasing supply and selection effectively reduces demand and prices fall.

- At this point, Tesla needs more than just big discounts and attractive updates for its cars. It needs fresher products in more segments.





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And that is despite price cuts! But this is as expected. Tesla is no longer the only EV game in town, and the freshest EVs from traditional manufacturers are simply fantastic! Whether it is the EVs from Hyundai-Kia in mainstream segments (my sister is taking delivery of the Ioniq 5 today :)), the Ford F150 Lightning & Mustang Mach-E, BMW I7 & Porsche Taycan at the premium end...the list just goes on.

Tesla is also grappling with an ageing product line. In the same time that the Model S has been on sale, we have seen three different generations of the S-Class!

This is because Tesla is like the (expensive) Maruti of EV’s. First mover advantage also translates to second mover advantage for competition!

Tesla has Flogged the model line till death, over promised and under delivered, sucked at new launches and has ran behind valuation increasing moonshots as FSD, robo taxi. Tesla is realising the hard way that they are finally in the boring car business !

Tesla profit margins worst in five years as price cuts, incentives weigh.

- Tesla's Q2 automotive gross margin to 14.6% vs. analysts' estimates of 16.3%
- Musk forecasts self-driving software to drive Tesla vehicles without human supervision next year
- Musk says Tesla likely to win approval for "supervised" FSD in China, Europe this year
- Tesla's sales of regulatory credits triple in Q2
- Tesla delays Robotaxi unveiling to Oct. 10 for vehicle improvements



Tesla reported its lowest profit margin in more than five years and missed Wall Street earnings targets in the second quarter, as the electric vehicle maker cut prices to revive demand while it increased spending on AI projects.

The company said it was on track to produce new vehicles, including more affordable models, in the first half of 2025, although the models will result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected. Shares fell 8% in after-hours trade.

The second quarter was tumultuous, with CEO Elon Musk shelving development of an all-new cheaper car in favor of less ambitious lower-cost models and working on creating self-driving taxis, helping to boost shares.

The company's electric vehicle deliveries have fallen for two consecutive quarters as the automaker battles rising competition and slow demand stemming from a lack of affordable new models. Tesla's sales of China-made EVs, which are also exported to Europe and elsewhere, slumped in the second quarter from a year earlier, whereas BYD Co opens new tab and other Chinese automakers posted strong sales growth.

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Tesla's Achilles heel, better priced specced chinese EVs. They're struggling in china and as chinese EVs improve their European operations, squeeze them there as well. Another major challenge is the slow product gestation for Tesla, it's extremely slow vis a vis competition.

One key factor is Elon Musk's foray into politics and the culture wars. We have to keep in mind that those who favor EVs in the West (especially the US) are still overwhelmingly relatively left of the spectrum. Hence, it doesn't do Tesla any favors when its boss supports the kind of politics that still denies the existence of climate change, which in many ways invalidates the very need for EVs.

While Chinese brands suffer from image issues thanks to their country of origin, they don't dabble in politics and aren't led by cult personalities but rather by faceless execs as with most car companies (I mean, most of us don't know the CEO of Hyundai or GM without googling). Meanwhile, when you buy or see a Tesla, its very difficult to disassociate the experience with Elon's personality.

Another aspect is its aging cars. The Model S is 11 years and funnily enough, it was possible to buy a Model S and an HM Amby from the same model year! The other cars are aging too with the Model 3 just getting a refresh (though a pretty good one). The only new model is the Cybertruck which while highly impressive has huge flaws to match, I mean I wouldn't want a car that can chop off my fingers or is prone to rust, the issue is the engineers had to work around Musk's childish designs, taking all its drawbacks with it.

That said Tesla is still certainly ahead of every other non-Chinese manufacturer except perhaps Hyundai-Kia in terms of battery efficiency, range, charging network & even cost - in California, apparently you get a Model 3 for less than a Camry! What Tesla should do is expand its portfolio with more 'normal' cars and a couple of exotics like Cybertruck to keep the brand image intact, this should keep it competitive for at least a decade!

Hand on heart, a Tesla Model 3 is still the only EV I would buy with my own money!

Was going to say just that. I know folks who wouldn't buy Tesla on principle because of Musk's general antics, deranged remarks and comments. Some of his tweets have been shocking to say the least and every passing day he seems to go down the spiral. E.g. Pizzagate tweets, reposting anti-Semitic posts, recommending controversial accounts etc. Things like these matter a lot in USA where everything now a days is political and personal. He shot his own foot by alienating the most affluential base in California and other such states. Instead he is pitching to people who don't give a hoot about EVs.

Its funny. On one hand we have perfectly good EV line up for left leaning folks but they are turned off by Musk, on the other hand we have GMC Hummer EV which is a very good product on its own but goes against the "left" persona while the "right" persona is turned off solely because its EV.

Tesla's bleak margins sink shares as Musk hypes everything but cars.

It was the biggest one-day percentage drop in Tesla's stock since 2020, and it left Tesla's market capitalization at just under $700 billion, down from over $1 trillion in 2021.

Tesla's shares tumbled 12%, evaporating almost $100 billion in stock market value after CEO Elon Musk's talk of humanoid robots and driverless taxis failed to comfort investors worried about the electric car maker's shrinking profit margins.
Tesla posted its lowest quarterly profit margin in five years late on Tuesday, with earnings per share missing estimates for the fourth consecutive quarter.

The company said the cheaper models it expects to bring out in the first half of 2025 would result in less cost reduction than previously expected, while delaying a widely awaited event for its robotaxi to October.

The company's price cuts and incentives pushed automotive gross margins, excluding regulatory credits, down to 14.6% in the second quarter.

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It's the product stupid:

• Ageing product line. Enough said.

The gold pot called carbon credits:

• $890 million carbon credit revenue is almost 60% of Tesla’s Q2 net income of $1,494 million. Thus, carbon credit sales bolstered the company’s bottom line.
• Imagine the revenue/profit numbers without the carbon credits. lol:

Source: https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesl...024-Update.pdf and https://carboncredits.com/teslas-pro...ecord-high-q2/

Republicans/Trump = bad for Tesla, and Democrats/Harris = good for Tesla? The red herring:

• Robert Gottliebsen: "A core part of the Trump strategy to win the presidency is to foster low-cost oil, gas and coal energy sources to decrease inflation and interest rates. There will be no mandate for carmakers to produce an increasing percentage of electric cars. The Harris stance will be the reverse of Trump, and the opinion polls are pointing to a close race. Tesla is caught in the middle.
  
  On the one hand, If Trump wins Tesla faces much more competition from petrol-driven cars, but if Harris wins the traditional US carmakers will be forced to compete even more vigorously for the electric market.".
• Basically, irrespective of who wins, Tesla will face even more competition.
• 

A potty mouthed CEO doesn't help:

• People don't talk about the Nazi connections/origin of VW, Porsche, Daimler-Benz or Henry Ford's views on Jews or unions.
  • Surprised you haven't heard of these? You can read more in the following links,
    • https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/o...ndt-flick.html
    • https://www.history.com/news/henry-f...rker-treatment
  • It probably doesn't get as much attention (these days) because the families related to the respective founders keep their mouth shut and want to be left alone. They don't attract any attention to them.
• Contrast that to Tesla's CEO. He's a lightning rod for controversy. Even worse is him attacking the belief system of the demographic that embraced EVs for reasons beyond just saving on running costs.

The TESLA vs. TSLA conundrum:

• Some people like TESLA cars, while some people like TSLA stocks.
• Obviously there's overlap between the two, but there are also distinctions.
• TSLA Superfans will believe whatever dream/vapourware Musk sells them. The stock value is more important to them than commonsense at times. Tesla can be a EV maker, Technology company or an AI company. It can be whatever Musk says it is. This dictates their behavior and their fierce defense to TSLA being not overvalued. After all, they have to believe in the dream for the stock to be priced high up in the clouds.

Add a bit of salt to any TESLA/EV dream you are being sold and do your own research to get the details. It applies to what I have posted above too. Surface level familiarity is being passed off as knowledge these days.

Trump is not against EV, he is only against EV mandates. I seriously doubt his policies will hurt Tesla. Trump has lot of respect for Elon and with Elon leaking all the damning twitter files, coupled with the onslaught of lawsuits and investigations conducted by Biden administration against Elon companies. Tesla is going to hope Trump wins. Also Elon is now sort of funding Trump campaign.

A company building CO2 capture pipeline endorsed Trump and now Trump wants to build it. So with Elon and couple of big billionaires all endorsing Trump along with campaign funds, Trump is not going to go against US companies, unless they are Reid Hoffmann or Soros funded companies.

If Trump removes the federal EV credits, it will hurt other EV makers more than Tesla. Since Tesla is fully vertically integrated, they will be able to price their cars more competitively than other US car companies.

BMW sold more EVs than Tesla in Europe for the first time.

The Dacia Sandero continues to reign as the best-selling vehicle, defying the SUV craze.



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I knew this was coming. To give a complete perspective to fellow BHPians, I have the following points

1. YTD sales of Tesla are nearly double of BMW. Tesla sold 178,700 cars and BMW sold 97,525
2. July'24 month sales for BMW are 14,869 and Tesla are 14,561. That is a difference of 308 cars. I would say that is kind of on par rather than more.
3. BMW has 110 years old legacy of selling cars and Tesla has a 21 years old history of existence. Even the comparison makes me laugh.
4. You forgot to mention that 10% YoY loss of sales for PHEVs compared to 6% of BEVs and that BEVs sold nearly twice that of PHEVs

Link for yearly data

I believe Europe and China will buy more of their own products. Same with Japanese but they still need to create some. People's taste and sensibilities cannot be changed and Tesla's interiors especially are not going to satisfy them. I addition, people there do like buying something made from companies closer to home.
Tesla enjoyed being the only one and will face more competition. They should have built Mega factories instead of Giga ones :)

Tesla delivers 495,570 cars globally in Q4, full-year 2024 deliveries fall for 1st time in over a decade

• Tesla saw record global deliveries in the fourth quarter, but fell short of Wall Street's expectations, and full-year 2024 deliveries saw a rare decline.
  
• The US electric vehicle (EV) maker delivered 495,570 vehicles in the fourth quarter, missing analysts' expectations of 512,277 units, according to data released today.
  
• That's up 2.28 percent from 484,507 in the same period in 2023 and up 7.06 percent from 462,890 in the third quarter.
  
• For the full-year 2024, Tesla delivered 1,789,226 vehicles globally, down 1.07 percent from 1,808,581 in 2023, the first decline in more than a decade.

Tesla vs BYD

• Weak growth resulted in Tesla being overtaken again by BYD in the BEV market in the fourth quarter.
  
• BYD released figures yesterday showing it sold 595,413 passenger battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the fourth quarter, up 13.11 percent year-on-year and up 34.28 percent from the third quarter.
  
• This is the second time BYD has overtaken Tesla in the BEV market, following the fourth quarter of 2023.
  
• Tesla only produces BEVs, while BYD also produces plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

Source: https://cnevpost.com/2025/01/02/tesl...eries-q4-2024/

ABC had some analysis that might be worthwhile to read.

• Tesla posted its first annual sales drop in more than a dozen years Thursday, sinking a stock that has soared since Donald Trump’s victory on optimism Elon Musk’s close relationship to the president-elect will help the company.
  
• The year-over-year global sales drop is Tesla’s first since 2011, according to figures from analytics firm Global Data. The company sold 1,306 vehicles in 2010, but that dropped slightly to 1,129 the following year.
  
• The fourth-quarter boost came with a cost. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Tesla’s average sales price to fall to just over $41,000 in the quarter, the lowest in at least four years.
  
• That doesn’t bode well for Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings on Jan. 29 and Tesla's stock fell more than 7% Thursday.
  
• Musk donated more than $250 million to Trump’s campaign and is a regular guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Tesla investors have pushed the stock up more than 50% since the election on hopes the new administration will streamline electric vehicle regulations and address other Musk policy priorities.
  
• In 2022, Tesla predicted that its sales would grow 50% most years, but the prediction ran into an aging model lineup and increased competition in China, Europe and the U.S. In the U.S., analysts say most early adopters of technology already own electric vehicles, and more mainstream buyers have concerns about range, price and the ability to find charging stations on longer trips.
  
• Falling sales early in the year led to once-unheard of discounts for the automaker, cutting into its industry leading profit margins.
  
• Competition from legacy and startup automakers is also growing as they try to nibble away at the company’s market share.
  
• Daniel Ives, a financial analyst at Wedbush, said he thinks the stock should be valued more on its promise of creating fully self-driving, autonomous vehicles and its AI technology and is still worth buying despite the sales drop.
  
• “We have never viewed Tesla simply as a car company...instead we have always viewed Musk and Tesla as a leading disruptive technology global player,” wrote Ives. “And the first part of this grand strategic vision has taken shape.”
  
• The fourth-quarter sales, while a record for Tesla, show that the company’s aging model lineup is reaching saturation in the entry level luxury vehicle market, said Morningstar Analyst Seth Goldstein.
  
• Aside from the Cybertruck, which has had limited appeal, Tesla’s newest consumer model is the Y small SUV which first went on sale in 2020.
  
• To meet Tesla management’s guidance of 20% to 30% annual sales growth this year, the company will need to come out with a vehicle priced in the mid $30,000s to appeal to more mainstream buyers who might be considering gas, electric or hybrid vehicles, Goldstein said.
  
• Tesla has floated the possibility of a new version of the Model Y that would cost in the mid $30,000s that may be smaller inside than the current Y with fewer features, Goldstein said.
  
• “At that point you’re comparable to some Hondas and Fords and GMs,” Goldstein said. “It takes you out of the luxury market to the more affordable vehicle market.”
  
• Jeff Schuster, vice president of automotive research Global Data, said Tesla faces intense competition worldwide from EV makers in China, the U.S. and elsewhere, many of which are selling EVs to more mainstream buyers. “If they want to continue to see the growth they had, they need to expand to other sizes and price points,” he said.
  
• Also, Musk’s support of Trump for U.S. president also could be turning off some buyers who may be more environmentally conscious and lean toward Democrats, Schuster said. A broader, less costly lineup would appeal to a larger group of buyers, he said. “I suppose the choices that he’s made on the political front don’t line up with a good portion of his buyers’ profile,” Schuster said.
  
• Industry experts say that Tesla used to be the only automaker with credible electric vehicles, but now others such as China’s BYD now have more to offer.
  
• At present, automakers have 75 electric vehicle models for sale in the U.S. Through the first nine months of last year, electric vehicle sales slowed in the U.S., but they are still growing.
  
• Nearly all of Tesla’s sales last quarter came from the smaller and less-expensive Models 3 and Y, with the company selling only 23,640 of its more expensive models that include X and S, as well as the new Cybertruck.