The company’s European sales are finally seeing signs of life after a plunge.
Norway’s Midnight Sun might be bringing a little brightness to Tesla’s gloomy European sales.
While sales of Elon Musk’s cars have seen a dramatic plunge across much of the continent this year, there is finally a little good news: Tesla took the no. 1 spot for sales of new cars in Norway in August.
Norway has a much smaller market than countries like Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, but at least Mr. Musk can claim a small victory after months of crushing sales declines blamed on his meddling in European politics.
The Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council reported Monday that Tesla’s Model Y made up 17.7 percent of all vehicle sales last month. The Volkswagen ID.4 was a distant second with 4.7 percent of sales followed by Tesla’s Model 3 with 4 percent of monthly sales.
Electric cars now account for more than 90 percent of all car sales in Norway. In August, EVs made up 97 percent of all new car sales. There are nearly 3 million registered cars in the Nordic country and 30 percent of them are now electric.
Spain, which is a larger car market, also showed growth for Tesla in August. Tesla sales were up 161 percent from the same period a year ago, though the overall numbers are low with total Tesla sales of 1,435 for the month in Spain. Tesla’s sales in Spain have risen 11.6 percent for the overall year.
The rest of the continent looks a lot bleaker. Sweden saw a more than 84 percent drop in Tesla registrations in August. France had 47 percent fewer registrations last month, according to Reuters. The Netherlands saw a 50 percent drop.
Tesla is facing headwinds in most of Europe, where Mr. Musk remains toxic. While the overall EV market share is climbing, Tesla’s sales dropped 40 percent year-over-year in July in the European Union.
Mr. Musk’s embrace of far-right candidates, calling a British prime minister an “evil tyrant,” and telling Germans “things will get very, very much worse” if they didn’t vote for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, were cited as reasons for sales declines by the Associated Press.
Another factor that has hurt Tesla in Europe is an aging product line, and it is still waiting for approval to allow its most advanced driver-assistance software to be unlocked in the bloc.
The struggles for Tesla extend to the United States car market, where Cybertruck sales have stalled. The company sold just 4,306 of the electric pickups in the second quarter of 2025, a year-over-year drop of 50 percent.
Tesla has also taken a beating over its chief executive officer’s meddling in American politics. Tesla’s shares dropped dramatically earlier this year amid worries that Mr. Musk was spending too much time away from the company.
The stock valuation has rebounded from its April lows but some buyers have are still boycotting the company over Mr. Musk’s close ties to President Trump before their messy split.
Mr. Funk was the managing editor of Pleroma Media, and worked as a breaking news reporter at The Messenger after spending 25 years at Fox Television as a producer, executive producer, and digital content director.
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