Tesla’s China-made EV sales fall 6% year-over-year in April as woes deepen

A Tesla logo is shown on Feb. 27, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

BEIJING — Tesla’s China-made electric vehicle sales fell 6% in April from a year earlier, extending declines for a seventh month, as the U.S. automaker grapples with intense competition from its Chinese rivals and a tarnished image in Europe.

Deliveries of China-made Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, which account for exports to markets including Europe as well as China sales, totalled 58,459 units last month, down 25.8% from March, data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) showed on Wednesday.

Tesla’s sales plunged across Europe in April, as people turned away from the brand because of CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right political causes and candidates in Europe. Chinese competitors increased their market share.

There have also been protests against Musk and an impact on Tesla sales in the United States.

To partly offset the sales slump in major markets of Europe and the United States, Tesla, which counted China as its biggest market in the first quarter, is ramping up efforts to sell into new markets such as India and Saudi Arabia, where Chinese EV brands are also planning expansions.

Tesla’s Chinese rival BYD , with its Ocean and Dynasty lineup of EVs and plug-in hybrids, saw last month a 19.4% jump year-on-year in global passenger vehicle sales to 372,615 vehicles.

About a dozen new electric crossover models that debuted at the Shanghai auto show last month are priced to challenge Tesla’s best-selling Model Y, potentially adding to the U.S. EV specialist’s mounting pressures in China and globally.

Mass production of a lower-cost version of Model Y will begin in Shanghai in 2026 to defend Tesla’s market share in China, Reuters has reported.

(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Aidan Lewis)