Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become even more of a political figure in the past six months, especially in the US where he has aligned himself with now-President Donald Trump.
While this has garnered significant support for the outspoken executive from those aligned with his views, it has also seemingly led to potential and existing customers of the electric vehicle (EV) giant voting with their feet, as Tesla sales in historically progressive regions have dropped.
Data from the California New Car Dealers Association shows Tesla sold 203,221 EVs in the state last year, down 11.6 per cent on the year prior following five quarters of sales decline.
While this may not seem like a significant decline for Tesla, California has always been an important state for the EV specialist.
Tesla held an 11.6 per cent market share there last year, against a 3.9 per cent share in the US overall.
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For context, Toyota was the market leader in California with 289,258 sales overall, enough to give it a 16.4 per cent share of the state’s new car market, and 12.8 per cent of the US.
Tesla’s year-on-year Californian sales drop of approximately 26,800 vehicles helped lead to the brand’s first-ever annual decline globally.
The company delivered 1,789,226 EVs worldwide in 2024 compared to its record figure of 1,808,581 in 2023.
Despite this, the Tesla Model Y was by far the best-selling vehicle in California last year, with 128,923 sales. For context, that’s more than seven per cent of all passenger vehicle deliveries, and double that of the Toyota RAV4.
It appears it’s not just California where deliveries are declining, with sales also dropping in Europe to start 2025.
As reported by Electrek, sales data from the UK and seven European countries – Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden – shows Tesla sold just 5517 vehicles in those regions throughout January 2025.
In the same month a year prior, it sold 10,556 vehicles, representing a year-on-year drop of 47.7 per cent.
It’s been a similar situation in Australia, where last month Tesla delivered just 739 vehicles, its lowest total in 18 months. This came off the back of sales declining in nine of the 12 months in 2024.
As reported last month, Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller recently told Bloomberg his brand has an opportunity to capitalise on this resentment against Mr Musk and Tesla.
“We get a lot of people writing that they don’t like all this,” Mr Lohsceller said of Mr Musk’s political stance.
“For Germany, somebody outside of Germany endorsing right-wing political parties [such as the Alternative for Germany] is a big thing.
“You want to know what I think about it? I think it’s totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. You just don’t do that. This is pure arrogance, and these things will not work.”
Mr Lohscheller also told the publication he has informed salespeople to specifically target disgruntled Tesla customers.
However, the German executive said Mr Musk is a “very successful businessman” and “done incredible things with Tesla,” which has consistently been the biggest driver of EV sales globally.
