Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
I recently dove into EV sales trends across auto groups and auto brands in 13 European markets (combined) using charts and data from EU-EVs.com. I’ve used the site off and on for years. I rely more on José’s comprehensive European EV sales reports, but there are ways of viewing data on EU-EVs.com that is different and interesting as well.
After looking at group and brand sales, I poked around a bit more to see what else I could find that was a bit interesting. The good thing with Tesla is that it basically has two models and they’ve been on the market for several years now, so I did have a look at those models. The resulting graphs are truly interesting. Even knowing how sales have trended in recent years, they were particularly revealing.
Here’s the Tesla Model Y cumulative monthly sales graph for the past handful of years it’s been on the market:
These can be a little tough to read, but here are the core points that jump out to me:
The Model Y’s best year was 2023, despite having a slightly better start to the year in 2024.
2024 was its second best year. Clearly, sales jumped up a lot in 2023, but then fell off a bit in 2024.
Sales took a big step down in 2025, a huge step down. (Note that December data isn’t complete yet.)
Sales in 2022 were still lower, but if trends continue, one could even see the Model Y’s 2026 sales dipping down to 2022 levels. That would be dramatic, and yet not shocking at this point.
Sales kicked off in 2021, so it’s not really worth discussing that ramp-up period.
Naturally, with more years on the market, teasing out what’s been happening with the Model 3 is harder, but let’s just highlight a few core points:
2024 was the Model 3’s best year, by far, thanks to the model’s established presence on the market and model refresh.
Other than that, though, its best years were 2021 and 2019 (thanks to a subsidy-driven surge at the end when it comes to the latter).
2025 will probably finish above 2023, but it’s not looking great, facing a similar kind of drop in sales as its Model Y sibling.
2022 and 2020 were its weakest years due to the Model Y joining the market and taking sales away from it in 2022 and COVID-19 hitting in 2020.
What does 2026 bring for these two models?
Note that the countries contributing to these sales data include Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, and Finland.
Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Advertisement
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
[embedded content]
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
Share this story!