Europeans still aren’t buying Teslas with figures out Wednesday showing sales plunged for a fifth month in a row in May, a blow to investors who had hoped anger toward Elon Musk would have faded by now.
Tesla sales fell 28% last month in 30 European countries even as the overall market for electric vehicles expanded sharply, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. The poor showing comes after Tesla’s billionaire CEO had promised a “major rebound” was coming last month, adding to a recent buying frenzy among investors.
They were selling on Wednesday, pushing the prices down more than 4% in early afternoon trading.
According to Tim Urban’s blog article on Tesla and Muck from 2015, one of Muck’s stated goals was to jumpstart the other auto manufacturers into producing their own EVs to accelerate the trend toward a more sustainable energy future. Whether that was true then or now is irrelevant, but it is nice to see EVs of many brands being made and purchased. Obligatory Fuck Muck, existential disappointment that he will forever be.
That is the one credit I will give to Tesla and Musk, they made the EV not only a realistic choice, but actually cool.
The original Model S was a cool car when it was launched, but now there are plenty of other cooler alternatives.
The current move towards electrification would not have happened or would have taken a lot over without Tesla. The Model 3 really was a huge breakthrough by showing that you can build a car that people actually want to drive and make it affordable. That pretty much made all the excuses of the incumbents moot.
I don’t think the 3 was a huge breakthrough, although it sure appeared to be, the S/roadster was really where it happened. The leaf had been out for several years, granted it had limited range in its first production models. The 3 was only remarkable because it had higher range at the price point, but that was more of a battery technology thing than a Tesla thing, as the bolt and leaf both had comparable range at the same price point around the same time, they just had the baggage of their manufacturers reputations and/or previous model specs holding back their PR.