- UK sales plunged 45 percent while the national EV market grew 28 percent year-over-year.
- Australia gave Tesla a rare win with 3,897 units sold and 122 percent Model Y growth.
Tesla has had a really tough year when it comes to sales. Despite launching an updated version of one of the world’s best selling cars, the Model Y, hyping new features, and promising progress on semi-autonomous tech, the company is struggling to move vehicles. In fact, the latest data paints a grim picture, with only a handful of glimmers of hope scattered around the globe.
Read: The Once Unthinkable Has Happened To Tesla’s Brand
While Tesla hasn’t officially reported its sales numbers, Tesla Archive on X claims U.S. sales dropped about 11 percent in May, with around 46,000 units sold. Deliveries for the year so far are also said to be down 11 percent. In fact, through the first five months of 2025, Tesla has only sold about 36 percent of the cars it delivered in all of 2024. Not exactly the kind of growth they were hoping for, if these numbers are accurate.
Trouble in the UK, Good News in Australia
Things aren’t looking much better across the pond. In May, Tesla’s sales in the UK plummeted 45 percent, according to early data from AutoMotive shared by Reuters. The company sold just 1,758 units, a significant drop from 3,244 in the same month last year. To make matters worse, UK car sales overall were up by 4.3 percent, reaching 144,098 units, and electric vehicle sales saw a 28 percent surge, which means Tesla is losing out big time.
At least there’s some good news coming out of Australia. Tesla delivered 3,897 vehicles in May, marking a 9.3 percent increase compared to the same month in 2024 and the highest number in nearly a year. This boost was mainly driven by the updated Model Y, which saw a massive 122 percent year-over-year sales jump in May.
That momentum also translated to a massive 675 percent spike over April, when Tesla managed to sell just 500 EVs, according to the Australian Electric Vehicle Council. Still, zooming out, the picture isn’t quite as rosy, as Tesla’s year-to-date sales in Australia remain down 48.2 percent compared to the same stretch in 2024.
A European Rollercoaster
Sales in Austria and Norway also looked good last month. In the former, Tesla had its second-best May ever with 643 sales. In the latter, sales jumped by a whopping 213 percent year over year in May. That figure accounts for 2,600 deliveries in the nation during the month. It was such a strong month for the automaker that it outsold the second-best competitor by more than double. Clearly, some countries seem to be moving on from the sales drama Tesla is experiencing.
Elsewhere, Tesla isn’t exactly getting a free pass. In Denmark, sales dropped by 31 percent, while Sweden saw an even more staggering 53 percent decline. France and Portugal weren’t much better, with sales down 67 percent and 68 percent, respectively. It’s clear that the Tesla wave is hitting some serious turbulence in key European markets, and the outlook for a quick recovery isn’t great.
Global Headwinds for Tesla
“Tesla’s strong sales growth in Australia this May is an encouraging sign, driven almost entirely by strong demand for the updated Model Y. But globally, Tesla is still facing headwinds,” Liz Lee, associate director at technology market research firm Counterpoint Research, told CNBC. Looking at the data, she couldn’t be more right.