Tesla UK sales rebound with one in four new cars now an EV

After months of lacklustre showroom performance, Tesla is once again thriving in the UK sales charts after what has been described as a “bumper” month for new registrations, with one in four new cars sold being an EV.

In June, the Tesla Model Y was the UK’s best-selling electric car and the third-most popular car in general, closely followed by the Model 3 saloon, which was the sixth-most registered car last month.

This comes after months and months of poor sales for Tesla; in May, Elon Musk’s EV brand was outperformed by the likes of BYD and Dacia. However, while Tesla’s market share is still down marginally from 2.29 per cent to 2.18 per cent year-to-date, it remains ahead of the aforementioned competition. 

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Tesla also admits that its sales do tend to peak towards the end of a quarter, whenever shipments arrive from its Gigafactory in Berlin, while many of this month’s registrations are pre-orders for the newly facelifted Model Y, which is just starting to trickle on to UK roads.

Nevertheless, outside the UK, Tesla isn’t faring so well; the firm recently reported that worldwide sales had dipped for the second quarter in a row, down 14 per cent year-on-year. And things could get worse, with President Donald Trump threatening to cut Tesla’s government subsidies as part of his ongoing feud with CEO Musk following his exit from the US Department of Government Efficiency.