Why is Tesla no longer S3XY?

Tesla is unable to recover. The American brand continues its free fall in Europe after seeing its sales fall by 52.6% in April compared to the same month in 2024: it sold only 5,475 cars in the Old Continent, compared to 11,540 twelve months earlier. The drama for the brand is enormous if we consider that the Model Y led the list of best-selling cars worldwide in 2023 and 2024, ahead of the Toyota Corolla and Toyota Rav4, which are not pure electric like Tesla.

In the cumulative year of 2025, Tesla has sold a total of 41,677 cars in Europe, which represents a drop of 46.1% compared to the first four months of 2024, aggravated by the fact that the market for electrified cars in Europe is 2. This reality means that while more electrified cars are being sold in Europe than ever before (now accounting for 15.3% of total registrations), Tesla is still clearly losing steam compared to its Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and European rivals.

An aged range

Tesla is currently an unattractive brand for European buyers, in one of the most flagrant declines in recent years worldwide. It is also a key player among those interested in the environment, but its abrupt departure from the United States government has also generated the enmity of many more conservative potential buyers. In 2019 Tesla introduced the Model Y, which completed its commercial range with the Model S, Model 3 and Model X, and which allowed for wordplay with the names of its four commercial models. However, since 2020 Tesla has not presented any new model capable of surpassing the Model 3 and Model Y, the two current mainstays of Tesla's commercial range. It is true that Tesla has made an effort to present improvements and updates for its models, but it has not been able to present any new model capable of attracting the attention of buyers.

If we add to this reality the fact that potential customers for electric cars are much more technological and change cars more frequently than those for combustion cars (either by formulas of renting or by reselling their car on the used market), we can understand the scale of Tesla's problem. An owner of a Model S or a Model 3, for example, will likely look for a different, unfamiliar option when changing cars, and will hardly ever repeat the same model. The Tesla Model Y Juniper, for example, is a model that leverages the base of an existing car rather than a real novelty on the market.

Elon Musk understands Tesla as a technology brand rather than a conventional car manufacturer, where the added value of the product is the software or vehicle software (Autopilot, connectivity and other infotainment options) more than the hardware or the car itself, with the risk that the image of the bodywork and interiors of its vehicles could be surpassed by its rivals and be unattractive or innovative for new buyers.

Finally, Tesla has been developing the idea of manufacturing an affordable car (between 25,000 and 30,000 euros) and compact size (around 4.3 meters long) for many years, which Elon Musk promises since 2020. priorities of the brand, which are the perfection of the new Tesla robotaxis and the maintenance of the current range with attractive commercial adjustments, especially in the Model Y and Model 3.