The share of rechargeable cars in Europe has approached the 10 percent mark this March. A total of 84,000 pure electric cars and plug-in hybrids were registered last month, the blog EV Sales writes in a recent post. About every fifth of these was a Tesla Model 3, of which over 16,000 were newly registered in Europe. This made the base Tesla by far the most sought-after car with a power plug in March 2020, and it was also in the lead in the entire first quarter, followed by the equally pure electric cars Renault Zoe and VW e-Golf.
16,000 Tesla Model 3 in March in Europe
The data mentioned in the article are extracts from a fee-based service and are therefore not complete. Even so, the numbers give an interesting overview of electric cars in Europe as a whole. Which countries are included is not revealed, but an example for the source service EV Volumes shows the most important EU countries plus Great Britain, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
The data shows that the entire car market in Europe slumped by 52 percent in March 2020 compared to the same month in the previous year. Plug-in cars, on the other hand, grew by 41 percent, which accounted for 6 percent of pure electric cars and 3.9 percent of hybrids. The Tesla Model 3 alone had a good 16,000 copies, which made it the market leader as well as in the entire first quarter. Because of the Renault electric car Zoe, which had previously been at the top of Europe , only around 4,300 were newly registered in March. The third-placed VW e-Golf sold around 3,500 units as in the previous months.
Tesla Model S and X hardly asked
In addition to the clear dominance of the Tesla Model 3 over the – still manageable – competition, the numbers also show that the more expensive Model S and Model X are no longer in great demand in Europe. According to EV Sales, neither of them made it into the European top 20 in the first quarter. With 1442 (Model S) and 1294 (Model X), the two Premium Teslas in Europe had to defeat the Mercedes EQC (around 1,500 new registrations). The Audi e-tron even registered around 8,300 new vehicles in the first quarter, almost half of them in Norway in March and the record number of 721 in Germany.
The Jaguar i-Pace, on the other hand, was registered a good 2,200 times in the quarter, which is also significantly more common than Tesla Model S and Model X. However, like the Mercedes EQC, this electric car does not belong to the Model S and X group, but rather with the Model 3 to the “medium-sized” vehicles.
Tesla competition from Tesla – and Audi
The real competition for the Tesla Model 3 in Europe will only begin when Model Y from the same manufacturer is there , EV Sales predicts. The recently available Polestar 2 will remain a niche offer, and the upcoming BMW iX3 can also be happy if it achieves a third of Model 3 sales. The dominance of the e-tron in large electric cars shows that even Tesla is not unbeatable. All you need is competitive products – and the electric Audi is at least semi-competitive. It will be time for Tesla to add more.
