{"id":65860,"date":"2026-01-27T14:08:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T17:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automotive.einnews.com\/article\/886948634"},"modified":"2026-01-27T14:08:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T17:08:58","slug":"tesla-fared-worse-than-any-automaker-in-eu-in-2025-even-as-evs-outsold-petrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/01\/27\/tesla-fared-worse-than-any-automaker-in-eu-in-2025-even-as-evs-outsold-petrol\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla fared worse than any automaker in EU in 2025, even as EVs outsold petrol"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Sales of electric cars outnumbered petrol-powered ones in Europe in December for the first time, even as Europe loosened rules<\/a> to allow automakers lenience to pollute more.<\/p>\n

But the huge increase in EV sales, led by BYD, was not accompanied by a similar boost in Tesla sales, with the company still seeing huge year-over-year declines in its global sales performance.<\/p>\n

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December and full-year sales numbers for Europe came out today<\/a>, published by the European Automobile Manufacturer\u2019s Association (ACEA), with great news for EVs.<\/p>\n

Overall auto sales grew by +1.8% over the previous year, though sales have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels.<\/p>\n

\tAdvertisement – scroll for more content<\/span> <\/p>\n

But more importantly for us here at Electrek<\/em>, EV sales positively boomed<\/em> in the region, particularly at the tail end of the year. In December, battery electric (BEV) sales were up +51% over the previous December, with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) increasing +36.7% and conventional petrol hybrids increasing +5.8%.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, sales of petrol-only cars dropped by -19.2% and diesel cars dropped by -22.4%.<\/p>\n

That year-end 51% boom was enough to add a new feather to the cap of BEVs: outselling petrol-only cars across all of Europe, at least for the month of December. For the past few years, EV sales have been creeping up as petrol-only car sales have been creeping down, and the two finally crossed in the month of December.<\/p>\n

Source: ACEA<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Note: that\u2019s the BEV-only<\/em> share exceeding the petrol-only<\/em> share. Collectively, BEVs and PHEVs (cars with plugs) accounted for a third of new car registrations, and petrol-powered hybrids accounted for another third.<\/p>\n

The numbers are even better when including non-EU EFTA countries (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein) and the UK. UK, for example, saw a third of new cars being electric in December<\/a>, a sales level that meets the country\u2019s 2026 goal already (though December is usually exceptionally strong for EV sakes in UK). Including EFTA and UK, BEVs outsold petrol-only cars by 26.3% to 21.7% respectively.<\/p>\n

Over the full year in the EU, BEVs made up 17.4% of sales and petrol-only cars made up 26.6%, so the year ended much stronger for EVs than it started.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

So, there\u2019s a reasonable chance that next month, gas cars will outsell BEVs again, but the trend is clear \u2013 EVs are rising, fossil cars are falling.<\/p>\n

And those EVs are being fueled by cleaner and cleaner energy sources, as well. In 2025, wind and solar overtook fossil fuels for electricity generation<\/a>, even in a country like Germany, which has little sun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The success of BEVs happened despite the European auto industry lobbying successfully to marginalize its own future<\/a> by committing further to the shrinking, fossil-powered piece of that pie, and surrendering to overseas competition that is not slowing down in its race towards electrification<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking of overseas competition: the individual brand which saw the highest sales increase over the course of 2025 was BYD, with a whopping +228% full-year sales increase, increasing from 39k to 129k cars sold over the course of the year.<\/p>\n

But another overseas brand, Tesla, fared particularly poorly, with a sales drop<\/em> of -37.2%. This was the highest sales drop of any company, excluding the two sub-brands of Jaguar and Lancia.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s sales drop is exceptional given that it is an all-EV brand, and the EV market is rising so rapidly.<\/p>\n

One would expect fossil-only brands to do poorly as EV sales rise, but Tesla has bucked that trend, largely due to its bad CEO<\/a> attempting to orchestrate a white supremacist takeover<\/a> of the continent. Given what went on the last time<\/a> someone tried to do that, Europe is understandably not enthused<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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… Europe loosened rules to allow automakers<\/span> lenience to pollute more. But … today, published by the European Automobile<\/span> Manufacturer\u00e2\u0080\u0099s Association (ACEA), with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}