Elon Musk may be riding high in the US with Donald Trump just weeks away from taking office, but fortunes of his electric carmaker, Tesla, are fading in Australia.
Australian sales dropped again in November, contributing to the brand’s first annual decline.
Tesla registered 2,540 sales in November, according to figures supplied by the Electric Vehicle Council. That’s a 35.5% drop compared with November 2023 and contributes to a 20.9% sales slide for the brand year to date.
Globally, Tesla still remains just in front of its chief rival, Chinese automaker BYD, with 18.5% of the market compared with BYD’s 17.5%.
Mike Costello, the corporate affairs manager at Cox Automotive, which runs Manheim Auctions and collates car market data, says the EV sector is evolving quickly and to some extent Tesla is caught in the upheaval.
“There’s a lot more competition than there used to be and there’s not a lot of new product coming out of Tesla, particularly at that more affordable end,” says Costello.
That competition includes EVs from mainstream brands such as Ford, Toyota, Subaru, Kia, MG and Hyundai as well as a plethora of recently arrived or soon-to-arrive Chinese brands that include BYD, Deepal, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Zeekr and Geely.
Sales of hybrids – led by Toyota – are also surging and providing an alternative that’s often more affordable than an EV.
All of which has put pressure on the EV market.
EV sales are still up for the first 11 months of 2024, but only by 3.1% – just 2,514 sales – according to figures supplied by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries and EV Council.
Of the 82,960 EVs sold so far this year 42% of them – 34,754 – were Teslas.
The bulk of the EV growth has come from newcomer BYD, which has sold 13,389 EVs, 2,414 more than last year.
But some customers are also looking to other brands, including Kia, which has sold an additional 900-odd EVs this year. BMW is also pushing hard on EVs, with 30% of its Australian sales now fully electric.
Another thing that can’t be ignored with Tesla is what some term the Musk factor. You don’t have to venture far on social media to find those who see Musk as an objectionable character. Costello says Musk is controversial enough to be turning some off the brand.
It’s spawned a niche online market in bumper stickers, from “we bought it before he revealed his dark side” to “make this car less embarrassing again”.
But before writing Telsa off altogether, it’s worth keeping the sales numbers in perspective.
“Tesla’s product lineup is still quite small and it’s getting on a bit in age,” Costello says.
The company only sells two models: the Model 3 mid-sized sedan and Model Y mid-sized SUV.
The two models play in the premium end of the market, priced from about $60,000, but each performs strongly in its respective market segment.
The Model 3, for example, was the top selling medium car last year and is still ahead of the Toyota Camry in 2024.
It’s single-handedly breathed new life into the mid-sized sedan market that many had abandoned (Subaru Liberty, Ford Mondeo and Volkswagen Passat among them).
Sales of the Model Y have dropped 29.3% this year but its 19,392 year-to-date tally is light years ahead of the nearest $60,000-plus SUV rival, the Lexus NX, with 5,619 sales.
And of about 50 mid-sized SUVs on the market the Model Y is the fifth-bestseller, behind only the Toyota RAV4 (53,599), Mitsubishi Outlander (25,622), Mazda CX-5 (21,237) and Kia Sportage (19,997).
It has outsold the Hyundai Tucson (17,743), Subaru Forester (12,386) and Nissan X-Trail (15,398) and the combined sales of the Honda CR-V, Volkswagen Tiguan, Skoda Karoq, Chery Tiggo 7 and MG HS.
The increasing popularity of hybrids with many of those rivals has provided healthy competition to the Model Y, which is expected to undergo a refresh in 2025.
