The shares of Tesla fell to a glaring 1.8% before the start of regular trading on Wednesday. Is Tesla losing its autonomy in market share? The tallies say so.
It was a slack start for the US electric car-making company Tesla in the second quarter, much opposed to Elon Musk’s hopes to do a lot better than the first quarter. On May 22, The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association issued their statistics for April 2024 where only 13,951 EVs have been registered, the lowest since January 2023. This decline of 2.3% from what it was a year ago, is an exception where April saw a 14% rise in EV sales industrywide.
Upon being asked by CNBC, Jon McNeill, the former president of global sales and services of Tesla answered that competition from Chinese, European, and Scandinavian brands might be responsible for this drop in EU. Commenting on the growing sales of EVs worldwide and several alternative brands, he said, “It may be a picture of what’s to come.”
Earlier this month, Tesla saw a slump in shipments from its Shanghai factory. It is unusual with respect to China’s bigger EV industry. The plug-in car company also saw unfortunate events in the first quarter when Red Sea disruptions delayed shipping and a suspected fire incident of power lines occurred near its German sport utility vehicle plant. The beginning of Q2 was definitely not a good start.
But what about the overall scenario of EV sales? According to This is Money, “Appetite for electric cars has remained sluggish as major markets reduce subsidies or roll back green policies.” Even Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz said they were seeing a waning demand for fully electric cars. In this scenario, Tesla sold 100,124 cars in the first four months of 2024, down from 108,737 year-on-year. This scenario might be a big blow to Tesla’s biggest drop in revenues.
How does Elon Musk see this for the future? Says McNeill, “Well, he sees that competitive battle coming, not in EV but Automotive Vehicles (AV).”
