EV Sales Crash 16.4% In Germany, But That's Nothing Compared To Tesla's Losses In First Half

• EV sales in Germany fell 16.4% in the first half of 2024, with Tesla sales plummeting 41.6%.
• Overall car sales rose 5.4%, with brands like BYD experiencing significant growth (427%).
• Luxury carmakers like Audi and Mercedes saw sales decline, while budget brands like Seat thrived.

Germany is the heart of a European car industry that is slowly switching to electric power, but domestic buyers are increasingly turning their noses up at EVs. Sales of battery vehicles slumped by an average of 16.4 percent in the first six months of 2024, but Tesla's terrible numbers almost make that look like progress.

Tesla's German sales slumped to 21,249 from January to June, a drop of 41.6 percent compared with the same period last year. Drilling down to look at just the June figures reveals that sales slid 42.2 percent to 4,648 units, putting it behind MG, which shifted 5,158, though not all of them were EVs.

Related: Tesla Shares Rise Despite Second Straight Quarter Of Sales Decline

It's difficult to put a positive spin on this kind of performance, and even more so considering that the German car market as a whole was up in the first half of 2024. Total passenger car sales grew by 5.4 percent to 1.47 million in H1 and improved by 25.8 percent in June to 297,329 compared with June last year.

BMW (up 2.7 percent to 114,690), VW (11 percent to 289,218), and Porsche (19.2 percent to 21,885) all fared well in the first half of 2024, but not every German brand will be celebrating. Audi sales sank 17.1 percent to 104,164 and Mercedes slid 12.7 percent to 126,847. Then again, they could have done worse. They could be Maserati, which registered only 300 cars in six months (down 56.9 percent).

Seat proved that it's not ready for the scrap heap (or conversion to a scooter brand) yet by growing its sales 37.9 percent to 83,426, and Skoda was up 24.9 percent to 104,248. Volvo's sales shot up 59.6 percent to 31,763, probably mostly due to the arrival of the bug-prone EX30 – but many of those buyers now dealing with software issues might wish they'd shopped elsewhere.

And then there's BYD. The 1,202 sales it registered from January to June might look inconsequential – Ferrari was just 80 units behind – but that figure represents a 427 percent leap over last year's figures. The Chinese brand has only really just got started in Europe and we'll be fascinated to see how many scalps it's claimed by the time next year's data is published.

Car Sales Germany