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Tesla’s all electric Model S has overtaken established and conventionally powered luxury car market leaders like the BMW 7 series and
That’s the view of pan-European newsletter Automotive Industry Data (AID), quoting its exclusive statistics.
In the first nine months of 2015, Tesla Model S sales of 10,600 in Western Europe exceeded the outgoing BMW 7 Series with 2,650 and the soon to be replaced Audi A8 limousine with 4,700. The Model S was only 800 sales short of the Mercedes S class, compared with a shortfall of 6,200 in the same period last year, AID said.
The fact the great majority of BMW 7s, Mercedes S and Audi A8s are diesel powered is likely to be another factor in Tesla’s favor at least in the near future.
In the past Tesla has done amazingly well in socialist, energy-rich Norway, where the tax on internal combustion engine cars can approach 100 per cent, while electric ones go tax free. But now Tesla’s success has grown across the board with sales of over a 1,000 in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany, followed by sales of between 500 and 850 in markets like Britain, France, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark. Switzerland and Germany don’t subsidize electric cars.
“Given the rise and rise of Tesla sales in these and other European markets, there are high expectations for Tesla’s forthcoming all-new Model X SUV , albeit some sales will no doubt come at the expense of its conventionally dressed Model S brother,” said AID editor Peter Schmidt.
At the Frankfurt Car Show last month, Audi unveiled a Tesla competitor, the all-electric Q6 e-tron SUV, but this won’t appear on the market until 2018. Last week troubled VW said its new flagship Phaeton sedan will be all-electric, but this won’t show until 2019. Meanwhile most of the German alternative engine competition has concentrated on plug-in hybrids, which are very expensive, not very popular, and likely to fall foul of German environmentalists who claim most of the time these vehicles will be using conventional carbon fuel, not electricity.
This all bodes well for Tesla.
“Given that Tesla doesn’t suddenly suffer from a major mishap on either the vehicle safety or reliability front during the foreseeable future, its future now looks a great deal more promising than could have been expected only a couple years ago. And all that at a time of plummeting fuel prices which have sparked a speedy return to larger, heavier and conventionally powered cars and SUVs,” Schmidt said.
“Tesla’s highly enterprising solo move and astonishing recent sales record against worsening odds on the global fuel price front suggests that Tesla means business and Europe’s high-brow prestige car makers have to learn to live with ever-increasing competition for some of the status-conscious customers, wherever they are,” he said.
