Australia is the latest market to report a significant drop in Tesla sales for the first month of 2025, and in this case, the automaker can’t blame the Model Y changeover.
Earlier this week, we reported on European markets releasing car sales data for January, showing a massive drop in Tesla sales.
Tesla sold roughly half as many cars in Europe in January 2025 compared to January 2024.
Most industry watchers agree that there are two main reasons behind the sharp decline:
- Elon Musk’s meddling in politics and spreading misinformation on social media is driving people away from Tesla
- Tesla is transitioning Model Y production to the new design, which is affecting production and sales
Now, Australia is reporting its car sale numbers for January 2025, and it shows that Tesla is also having issues in this market.
In the first month of 2025, Tesla delivered only 739 vehicles – down 33% year-over-year.
This time, Tesla can’t blame the Model Y changeover as Model Y deliveries were actually up 20%.
Model 3 is the problem. Sales of Tesla’s cheapest model were down 63%.
This has been Tesla’s trend in Australia for the last year. In January 2023, Tesla delivered more than 2,000 vehicles in the country, but now it can only deliver a few hundred units. In 2024, Tesla’s sales dropped 17% for the whole year.
Electrek’s Take
Top comment by Leo
Canadian sales will also decline substantially due to loss of EV incentive, higher prices, and political alienation.
US sales will decline as well.
In China they are being outcompeted by superior technology.
Tesla sales in 2025 will be down at least 20% globally from 2024. They have enough cash to ride this out but they need to turn things around fast.
At this point, it’s fairly clear that Tesla’s sales will be abysmal in Q1. Tesla will use the excuse of the Model Y changeover, and it will undoubtedly be partly true, but I think the Elon effect is also be a significant part of Tesla’s sales problem.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to calculate, but in the case of Australia, we can see that it’s part of the problem with the model breakdown.
Australia is not a huge car market and it won’t have a major impact on Tesla, but the trend appears to be similar in most markets.
The US is the biggest wildcard, as Elon still has a lot of fans there, obviously. US data is a bit more opaque and it will take a while for us to see an impact, if any.
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