Summary
- Volkswagen beat Tesla in European EV sales across the first three months of 2025, data shows.
- Registrations for VW EVs are up more than 150%, while Tesla lost huge ground.
- However, the Model Y and Model 3 remain Europe’s top two most-registered EVs.
You’re telling me a cool story about how the Tesla business model is supposed to work. My question is why I’ve seen a grand total of one Tesla on the road across three countries and yet somehow it was seemingly the top EV brand.
Troed’s answer above going “Teslas and full electric EVs in general are popular in very specific regional pockets” goes much further towards answering that question, I think.
Could be that those three countries and/or the specific parts of them you traverse aren’t typical for all 44 countries of Europe.
Can confirm, my experience says there’s been a massive increase in Teslas on the road in my region these last ~3 years, and lately VWs (ID3, 4, Buzz) are increasing too. There’s other brands too that are also going up a little, but they’re less easily identified at a glance if you don’t know the models.
Or viceversa. Hence the point of even asking in the first place.
I flagged that my impression was anecdotal up front, but the most interesting takeaway of the way this thread ended up playing out is that people are super happy assuming everybody else’s fragmentary data or observations are anecdotal but theirs are a typical, statistically significant sample.
Bit of an unexpected way to lose faith in humanity this fine morning, but here we all are, I suppose.