Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
I had seen stories about Elon Musk’s political interference in the UK turning people off to buying Teslas, but I had also seen Tesla fans highlighting Tesla growth in the UK in some months. So, even in the midst of severely dropping Tesla sales in Germany and Europe more broadly, I thought Tesla’s performance in the UK in 2025 would be okay, or perhaps even one of the company’s few bright spots.
But then I saw some comments yesterday from a couple of our readers.
This first one, from “European Bob,” is a shocker: “Here in the UK, the EV market grew 24% in 2025, whilst Tesla sales dropped 10%.”
Wowza. I mean, a 10% drop is certainly not Tesla’s worst! It had much more disappointing results in other markets, but the UK EV market grew 24%. That makes the 10% drop look especially poor.
And then reader “ABrightSparkIsFollowedBySmoke” replied to the thread with this total whopper:
Something really wild:Tesla sales dropped from 50,334 in 2024 to 45,513 in 2025.BYD sales rose from 8,788 in 2024 to 51,422 in 2025.
The narrative that BYD were useless outside China didn’t age well.
Aside from Tesla’s 10% drop, holy cow, look at BYD’s rise! And the fact that BYD actually beat Tesla in the UK…. Holy cow.
After such a dramatic shift in the market, what can we expect in 2026? Will Tesla sales continue to decline? There’s no Model Y refresh to boost sales this year. There’s no new model coming. The Model 3 is only going to get older and more dated. BYD, meanwhile, is consistently rolling out new models. And it’s just gotten its sales network established. It has gone more of an old-school route of growing its business, but is also constantly on the cutting edge of EV technology.
Could Tesla get a boost and revival from “Full Self Driving” (FSD), or lose more sales due to Elon Musk’s political antics? Are customers going to move on because Tesla is no longer the hot new thing in EVs and other brands keep introducing fun new EV models?
Anyway, stay tuned for a much more detailed breakdown of the UK EV market in 2025 from Max Holland. That will be coming soon.
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!