The French are saying “non, merci” to Tesla, as sales crashed to just 700 units in May – a level not seen in more than three years.

The Model Y changeover was clearly not the problem.

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the company has “no demand problem” and that even though Europe is its weakest market, “everyone is struggling in Europe, there’s no exception.”

We have already produced a report to demonstrate that this is not true, but we are now receiving more data from May, which highlights Tesla’s growing problems in Europe.

France has just released its car registration data for May, confirming that the auto market is down 12%. However, Tesla’s sales were down even more than the rest of the market.

Tesla delivered only 721 vehicles in France in May – down 67% compared to the same period last year.

In Q1, Tesla blamed its poor performance on the lack of Model Y availability due to the design changeover, but it doesn’t have this excuse in Q2, which is now tracking below Q1 in Europe.

May was Tesla’s worst month of deliveries it has had in the last three years. It’s also even worse than any month of deliveries in the first quarter, despite the new Model Y now being in full production in Gigafactory Berlin and available in France.

Electrek’s Take

I’ll write a more comprehensive post about Tesla’s sales in Europe once we have data from more countries in May, but it’s not looking good.

Tesla blamed its terrible performance in Q1 on the Model Y changeover, but we are past that in Q2. Yet, April was worse than January, and now, it looks like May is going to be below February in the whole of Europe.

The only positive market so far is Norway, and that’s probably due to some of its large existing base of owners in the country updating to the new Model Y, but it will be interesting to see if it’s sustainable through out the rest of the year. I doubt it. Tesla benefited from the Model Y changeover, but I expect the brand damage will also be felt in the popular EV market.

This result in France in May is particularly interesting because it is even worse than April. I literally have to go back to Q2 2022 to find a quarter when Tesla had a worse second month of a quarter in France.

It is starting to look like demand collapse.