KEY POINTS
New European car registrations of Tesla vehicles totaled 8,837 in July, down 40% year-on-year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, or ACEA.
BYD recorded 13,503 new registrations in July, up 225% annually.
Elon Musk’s automaker faces a number of challenges in Europe, including intense ongoing competition and reputational damage to the brand.
It’s because people are waiting for the new model Y. 🤣🤣🤣
t’s not only Tesla feeling the heat from Chinese competition. Jeep owner Stellantis, South Korea’s Hyundai Group and Japan’s Toyota and Suzuki, all posted year-on-year declines in European new car registrations in July.
Japan has generally been really underwhelming in the EV market, offering mostly Hybrids. While I hear Hyundai is cheap in USA, that is not really the case in EU, a Huyndai is as expensive as a VW. Stellantis is a crap show, they continuously offer too little too late and overcharge for it.
By contrast, Volkswagen, BMW and Renault Group, were among those that logged increases in new European car registrations across the month.
VW group is really killing it here in Denmark 7 out of top 10 most sold models are from VW group here, and I think in most of EU it’s mostly similar, because they offer cars with a very strong combination of range quality and attractive price.
VW has the lowest rate of errors at German mandatory biannual safety check published by TÜV, with for instance Tesla failing 7 times more often, With nearly 15% failure rate!!
In Denmark it’s even worse for Tesla with 30% of model 3 failing after 4 years!!! (first mandatory check) And Tesla even rejecting repair under warranty.
The faults aren’t minor either, they are serious faults in brakes, suspension and steering! No other brand is nearly is bad as Tesla in safety checks! The average rate is 11% so Tesla is about 3 times worse than average!!https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-biler/2025-01-populaer-tesla-model-dumper-med-et-brag-til-syn
The Kia EV3 and Picanto are pretty popular in the Netherlands nowadays, which are basically just a Hyundai in disguise.
The KIA EV3 was very well received by the press here, and won car of the year first price with Skoda Elroq as #2.
But in sales the Skoda Elroq beat the KIA EV3 with the Elroq as #1 and the EV3 as #3.
KIA Picanto is a model that has been reasonably popular here, is that available as BEV now?
Here BEV clearly dominate the market. I think all of top 10 cars sold are BEV.I think I wrote 7 of top 10 were VW group, turns out it was actually 8 out of 10.
With KIA EV3 and Renault R5 being the only 2 that are not from VW group. And the VW T-Roc and Cupra Leon as the only non BEV.Also note that despite BEV is absolutely dominant, Tesla is completely out of top 10 now.
If you don’t have a translator in your browser, I can copy paste a translation of the article for you.
Just for fun, you might try to “decode” the Danish text, and be surprised how much you can understand. I sometimes do that with Dutch, and knowing English and German and having Danish as a native language, I can understand about 80% 😋 , but it’s slow as hell.
It’s so bizarre to me that Toyota in particular isn’t a bigger player in the EV market after they were the first to get a mass market hybrid going. They were halfway there before anyone else, why’d they stumble so badly?
Two things I think. They gambled on fuel cells because it offers an easier solution at a time when charging stations were rare. It’s Tesla becoming popular very quickly followed by VW going all out on EV that really caught them on the backfoot. The second thing is that they underestimated the level of change to battery technology. They (at the time correctly) stated that for every 10 EV’s, they could make 90 hybrids. While that is still valid, the battery technology has evolved significantly and become cheaper in the process. Even 2 years ago you couldn’t find an EV in Europe for under 30k €, now there are several cars to choose from and not only Chinese cars either.
No one stumbled at Toyota. They sell more hybrids than all the EVs combined. Toyota makes money. Most companies lost money on EVs.
Because the Japanese government 25 years ago encouraged Japanese manufacturers to develop Hydrogen cars, that never went anywhere.
Only Nissan had an early effort on BEV with the leaf, but it was underwhelming, always the battery was too small, because they thought it was more important to keep the price down, and sell it as a secondary city car, than make an actually useful battery electric car.For all their faults, Tesla did show the way, that it was possible to make good battery electric cars, instead of the flimsy comedic electric toy cars that were common at the time Tesla introduced the model S.
However the Hydrogen car may actually still be the future, that future is just not yet, because the price and loss of energy making hydrogen are too high, so hydrogen is not a good option until we have huge amounts of surplus energy from renewable sources that are otherwise wasted. At that point hydrogen may make a comeback as an excellent buffer to even out the difference in production to consumption of renewable energy.
But on the other hand, batteries may be so widespread at that point, that we may just use huge batteries to do the same.In my household we have a 7.5 kWh battery that charges from our solar panels, that can last us ½ a day, easily enough to last the night over during summer. Imagine if we used a cheap used 100 kWh battery from a car instead. That would be enough to last us a whole week! At such a point the variance of renewables will be easily compensated by battery parks.
Hydrogen will however be superior for planes. Because hydrogen cells are lighter for the same energy than batteries, and the hydrogen can even be used directly in a jet engine with no harmful emissions. But we are probably still more than a decade away from that becoming main stream, although there are already examples of using it.
So all in all Toyota arrived this year with their first attractive BEV. And they will absolutely be a major player soon.
Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about all the hydrogen car experiments! There was even an actual functioning hydrogen bus system for a little while in a city not too far from me
According to owners and Consumer reports, Teslas are relatively far below industry average for reliability. While everyone is encouraged by new battery longevity, the motors fail at very high rates.
All true, but North America does not have mandated safety inspections for cars. They are used until they fall apart and kill people.
It depends, some states in the USA do have safety inspections, but most don’t. I can’t speak for any of the other north American countries though.
VW has been getting some flak for being more expensive to maintain than for instance Tesla, but clearly it makes a difference, VW is doing better in checks than Toyota, that many Americans consider the most reliable car brand.
Tesla’s high failure rate is primarily due to rust on the brakes from people using regen. Rust will form on all brakes if left unused, it’s just a matter of using them. There was also an issue with the front suspension that required a service bulletin at the time that was legit, but wasn’t a saftey thing.
There’s a few things that could lead to Tesla having higher rust rates over other EVs
- Tesla might have stronger regen so people use the brakes less.
- Tesla has a strong 1 pedal driving option which further reduces braking if enabled [0 brake pedal usage needed to come to complete stop, it will blend in brakes for the last few km/h]
- For cars that use blended braking anywhere, they may initiate it sooner than later.
Either way on an EV, you need to use your brakes on occasion or rust will form. Using the brakes clears the rust.
Edit: Essentially, this is a case of the facts are true, but the facts don’t always tell the whole truth. If you walk away from reading about this report thinking Tesla is the least reliable car, you’ve been mislead, unintentionally or not.
Tesla’s high failure rate is primarily due to rust
This is not true, although it is a common point of failure for Electric vehicles, it is not the primary fault, slack in the steering is.
Rust on the brakes is a very well known issue for all electric cars. Problem for Tesla is that the first security check coincide with the last service check under warranty.
Regulation regarding rust on the brake discs is very clear, and trivial to fix. So why wasn’t it fixed?
There was also a common issue with suspension.No matter what or why a 30% failure rate is insane. The best cars (from VW) have only just above 2% failure rate!!
Either way on an EV, you need to use your brakes on occasion
This is true, and has been widely publicized here in all newspapers, so mostly any owner of an electric car should know that.
But more obviously the Tesla service should absolutely have known, and fixed the issue before the mandatory safety check.
Again no other car is even close to as bad as Tesla.Regulation regarding rust on the brake discs is very clear, and trivial to fix. So why wasn’t it fixed?
It’s not something to “fix” like that.
It’s there one day and its not the next. If it’s there, you fail.
It just depends on if you’re using them or not and the weather at the time. If you take the time to go to a shop for a pre-inspection (not everyone will), and they see rust, they’ll just tell you to go use your brakes. That’s the fix.
Tesla wasn’t going to be last if not for this rust issue.
Edit: Just to be more clear - If you drive your car in the rain, park it for a few days or even overnight and check it, you’ll have rust. You don’t fix that in any way other than using them. OEMs don’t just fix that.
Tesla wasn’t going to be last if not for this rust issue.
First that is simply wrong, did you not see the biggest point of failure is in the steering? The brakes are not what makes Tesla worst, it’s the general shitty quality and service.
Tesla wouldn’t be last if they didn’t have any faults… duh.
Tesla is so much worse than everybody else in several regards, remove the brake problem and they would still be worst. Also it’s completely irrelevant, if Tesla has this issue more than other cars it makes them worse. You might as well say they aren’t bad except for the wheels falling off all the time.
Other brands exist under the same physical laws, but don’t have as many issues as Tesla, also these issue for Tesla are not isolated to Denmark, in Germany we see a similar picture, Tesla has higher failure rate than any other brand.Oh shit, I didn’t realize this was Denmark, i was thinking of the German one. In the German one, Tesla was only 1-2% above the next worst one which wasn’t an EV. And the reason Tesla would have more issues with rust is the reasons I listed above.
Where do you see the actual numbers/ranking the article you posted doesn’t show that, but the first thing it calls out is brakes (among all the others)
Edit this is the quote from the article
It is especially the fault groups “brake equipment”, “lamping equipment”, “axles, wheels and tires” and “controlldom” that the cars fail
I tried to find an article with better info, but I couldn’t, the info was available a couple of months ago. Search engines just wont give me those articles.
But IMO it doesn’t really matter if it’s rust on the brakes, the brakes need to work in emergencies where regenerative braking is not enough.
You don’t get a pass for not using your brakes much in your daily driving. It’s a serious safety issue and not just some minor thing that isn’t important.
Tesla not having this under control shows that Tesla is not a good brand for safety.It’s not a serious saftey issue at the level that would fail the car.
If you are gung ho on regen and never use/clear your brakes, you could definitely get to the point of it being legitimately dangerous, and that 100% needs to be found during an inspection and resolved, but that’s not what’s happening here in a lot of cases. This isn’t a OEM problem, it’s driver education around something entirely new problem. (edit: There are a lot of signs that something is wrong before it gets dangerous.)
Did he really think Europe would like his Elon Hitler salute?
That’s only a part of the reason. Europe now has 12 models of EVs at €25,000 that by every measure, are better.
Which ones? I know about Dacia, but most others I’ve heard of start at 30k
Lovely, let’s keep making certain the stupid prizes he wins are worth it. He likes Tesla so much, we could collectively do the funniest thing by making sure his fortunes end.
And Xiaomi / BYD are not really that much aggressive atm. Xiaomi built factories in Hungary which just wait to start operations. Tesla is cooked in that regard.
I tried to drive a model 3 and it was infuriating to have everything on touch including turn indicators, windshield wipers and especially the gear selector.
Then a huge screen that can’t be used with your phone so you’re still forced to use a phone holder like a decade ago.
For me a car without carplay/android auto loses $5000 in value, and “touchscreen everything” removes another $5000 in value. I could only accept those compromises in a $20k car if new, $10k if used
Wait what?? I knew they overused terrible touch screen controls… But you can’t even connect your phone properly?
What does “properly” mean in this context? In my experience, every android auto -supporting car is way worse than Tesla.
Well the way he framed it. As in you still need your phone in an holder. I figured you can’t properly control your music from Tesla. Can’t easily make calls, Bad support for other apps. I’ve never really experienced a Tesla properly, and I would way too ashamed to do so nowadays. So I don’t really know the experience very well.
I mean, infotainment is the one thing where they’re not TOO bad. I think you can just get native apps for Spotify and Apple Music. No Waze though.
You don’t need your phone anywhere, it’s just not Android auto. You can make phone calls through your phone via voice, it can play music from your phone, but there’s limited controls there to control the phone, or you can just use any of their built in music apps with full voice and touch screen controls. I think you can even do voice to text messages or have text messages read to you, but I’m not 100% sure on that one. There’s something about text messages though. You can share a map location from your phone directly to the car.
The phone connects over Bluetooth. The car itself runs apps for some services, so you log in on the car for those apps to run them natively. If you personally don’t use any of the services/apps it supports though, you’re stuck with Bluetooth only. Full forward/back/skip/ etc supported but it’s not android auto. I think all the models come with the built in phone charging cradle spot under the touch screen.
A lot of engineers are obsessed with touchscreen everything because sci-fi from the 70s to 90s was obsessed with that shit, so they became obsessed with it.
It’s a cost thing. It’s cheaper to get a shitty commodity touch screen from Alibaba and slap it in a cheap bezel, hook it up to a potato, and then just outsource the design and functionality to the code team in India. It’s more expensive to actually do the industrial design to fit physical buttons and dials and source all the components required for the same. Engineers are obsessed with screens because their bosses are obsessed with cost.
It’s the consumers, not the engineers, who go all starry-eyed and get so easily wowed over a crappy $12 touch panel with shit for pixel density and fuck-all for viewing angles, because they’re the ones who have been bamboozled into believing this is all “futuristic.” Most people aren’t tech savvy enough to realize they’re being sold cheap bullshit at a premium.
My understanding is that they also aim that way to reduce moving parts - since knobs, buttons, and switches are more likely to fail after 5000 uses. That, and they can update touchscreens to do whatever they want differently, like serve up ads.
and people were still trying to buy this car, most cars has the bluetooth feature where it connects to the computer, tesla dint have that?
It connects to your phone in the sense that you can:
- Make phone calls
- Receive and send texts (no Whatsapp/signal/telegram or any other kind of app based messaging)
- Listen to audio, if you manually start the playback on the phone
- Use your phone hotspot to stream from the built-in Spotify or other streaming services, if you don’t want to pay a $120/year subscription
But it can’t do basic mirroring like most cars on the market can do.
In this way, if you want to have traffic info or speed camera alerts, you’re forced to pay for Tesla premium subscription, as there’s no other way to show a third party navigation app on the big screen (except ugly hacks like using the web browser for navigation, which is a safety hazard)
At $10 or less a month, (It’s $99 for a year, $9.99 for a month) it’s cheaper than using a gig of data on many non-unlimited plans. It’s at least a better deal than the price-equivalent GM OnStar plan for example.
For Tesla, I believe the only feature locked behind the subscription (won’t work unless subscribed, even with a separate hotspot) other than live traffic is the Tesla-app based bandwidth-intensive stuff like viewing the sentry cameras remotely, but I don’t have a definitive list.
I think the nav will take traffic into account when navigating, even if you don’t subscribe, but it won’t show you traffic. I’m not sure on that though, it may have been true a while ago and changed.
In my country I get 150 gb of 5G data for 5.99 a month, so the Tesla premium connectivity subscription is not worth at all
I already pay for almost unlimited data, and I have a 8 core with 16gb of RAM in my pocket, with all my information on it: the best option is to just mirror my device and let me use my preferred navigation system or use alternative music apps like Tempo.
It’s inefficient to have a Ryzen class computer in the car just because otherwise the mothership can’t monetize the infotainment
I just wanted to point out that it’s not insane, like some of GM’s OnStar plans for example, the cheapest of which is 9.99 a month.
Should cars have subscriptions? Fuck no, but I was only trying to post facts, not opinions, in that comment.
Yes your point is valid, only the remote cameras part is cheaper than what Google asks for the nest cameras… And in that case it’s using your home WiFi
Of course it does. You should take everything said here about Tesla with a lot of salt. People hate them enough to lie about it.
I will buy neither.
BYD is selling a lot because is subsidized heavily by the chinese government to disrupt european brands, and this despite having a 35% tariff on top for not disclosing this to the EU.
Every country subsidizes it’s major industries like that. Also, this is public knowledge. China isn’t secretly hiding their state ownership and subsidies.
Nobody subsidizes on the same scale as what China is doing. Nobody operates entire market sectors at a loss for strategic advantage. The reason why China is doing this is because they’re comfortably in the lead among world powers and can afford to lose a bit, and also: everything is a weapon in their eyes, and they’re determined to use their weapons on everyone else.
EDIT: Although I do admit the Oil Industry is pretty equally cutthroat, Saudis weaponize crude and Russia weaponizes Natural Gas.
BYD is hiding $44B in debt. Chinese EV industry is eating itself and is the next Evergrande. They are losing money on every sale.
This is how modern “competition” works in every industry. China is just following the standard model of taking losses in order to monopolize the market. Why do you think so many companies in the US (Uber being the most obvious one) are just taking losses for years and years?
I feel like people don’t understand modern economics and the complete lack of competition. So when our media says “China is bad. Look at them cheating!” people believe it.
China isn’t cheating or “going to crumble because of this” like all the YouTube click bait videos say. This is literally just how the global markets work.
Is it good? Fuck no. But it’s not unique to China at all. And their 5 year planned economic systems are much more prepared for a global collapse than ours are. At least in meeting the material needs of its citizens. The US has all but gutted any of its social safetynets for when this all goes to hell.
BYD is being sued for slave like conditions in Brazil.
You think they’ll do that in Brazil and not China?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v5n7w55kpo
Everyone is like YAY BYD BAD TESLA, but buying a BYD is gonna be worse overall. If you want to buy something other than Tesla, don’t buy a fucking BYD. Find a non Chinese brand, there are plenty of them now.
BYD blows Tesla out of the water
To be fair, a 1986 Toyota Camry blows Tesla out of the water.
Hey, Tesla is a champion in some categories.
Like you’re statistically more likely to die burning to death in a Tesla Cybertruck than a Ford Pinto. That’s a record that has been held for 45 years.
Ah ya, i remember that article. The one where the author used the cyber truck being blown up by a person using fireworks and the limited sales / fires to get to that conclusion the fireworks allowed.
I testdrove a BYD. A bit meh.
So now criticizing Chinese cars gets downvotes on lemmy?
Always has.
I want to like chinese EVs so much, but they put in so many novelties that look like points of failure in 10 years
I just want the electric equivalent of like a miata; reasonably cheap, fun to drive, and trivial to maintain for decades.
I just want a super sized RC car with good suspension.
When the battery runs flat I want to pull up to a battery station and pop off the two ZZ dry cells from the trunk and pop two new ones in for a dollar and go back at it.
Batteries are heavy, you’re looking at .5-1 tons of Li-ion batteries. A number of companies are doing battery swap though it doesn’t seem to be catching on.
If mass production of solid cell batteries works, that could be lowered to 5 40 lb batteries.
Gee do you need to be a wizard to figure out aligning yourself with idiot right wingers wasn’t a good business decision when your entire business appeal is about being a good person and saving the planet
Saving the planet by selling cars that cost >1.5 median yearly income, pretax was always a joke.
its expensive for an such average ev car.
60% of their business used to be racists. Now its 100%
That’s what he gets for being a lying idiot nazi prick.
Tesla also makes inferior cars. Tesla also has a big unneeded tv in the car. Tesla car is a kind of an early access with their bugfix patching. Teslas’ main product is also your data.
Tesla cars were a very good prospect until pretty much this year. Most people are fine with everything being on a big dumb screen instead of having proper buttons (even though it’s a usability and safety nightmare) and once you get past that, they’re comfortable and practical - and well-priced compared to the non-Chinese competition.
But now, Elon outed himself as an actual Nazi, and took away proper indicators and gear selectors.
Comfortable is subjective. Model Y suspension was certainly crashy when I rented one for half an hour for the lulz
now everyones reporting issues with the regular cars to, that they dint do it for years?
What do you mean?
Don’t most them don’t have a mechanical way to open the door? Like if the battery dies or there is a software glitch you legit can’t open the fucking door. Ppl have literally died cause their shit ass doors only unlock electrically.
The normal way to open the door is with a button that cracks the window slightly, because the door does not contain an upper window frame for aesthetic reasons. However, there is a mechanical release.
What you will be thinking of is that on some models (I can’t remember which exactly) the mechanical release for the rear doors is not in an obvious place, so if you need to get out in a hurry, u gon die.
This is obviously moronic design and risks lives for no practical benefit, but most people don’t base their purchasing decisions based on what might go wrong in a tiny number of crashes. You could compare it to a decision to buy a luxury car rather than a normal one: that’s tens of thousands of currency units that you could set aside to retire a year early, or in case you or some close to you hits bad luck. The practical choice is to buy the normal car (or the non-Tesla), but the likelihood that it will be important is very small, so it’s not really crazy to make the non-practical choice.
There’s plenty of cars without rear doors at all, never seen them criticized the way people criticize the “non-obvious mechanical release” of teslas. It’s basically grasping at straws to justify the hate of musk, as if he he didn’t do enough shit himself already to fully justify all blowback.
I’ve just realized the back seat of my two door car is a death trap thanks to your comment.
… Good thing nobody ever rides back there and it’s just used for storage.
Yeah it’s a common thing - if people don’t like something, they will be very critical of everything related to it. Many people are not capable or even really interested in being fair; if you mention this you will be accused of “defending” them.
Tesla also has a big unneeded tv in the car.
Ehh, have you ever seen a BYD? All their models are essentially “Tesla but more obnoxious”.
I did not. Not the cockpit. I’m sure it’s bad as well. For me any touch control in the car is bad news.
And with a virtual assistant.
Not even that …
BYDs are better and cheaper than pretty much any other EV. That’s why Americans can’t buy them.
And why Americans can’t afford used cars.
https://www.financefling.com/how-much-would-a-byd-car-cost-in-the-usa-in-2025/
Even after current tariffs, it’s cheaper than everything else.
The vast amount of Americans are suffering so a handful of wealthy ones can get even wealthier.
I’ve read a number of European reviews of the byd dolphin and most I’ve seen have compared it unfavorably to European EVs
Looks like the average Euro EV is ~44k and the dolphin comes in under 30k, under 25k in UK…
It definitely doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it’s a shit ton cheaper.
The people writing reviews for brand new cars have a target demographic: people that routinely buy new cars.
The majority of people won’t have the same priorities, especially these days.
EU has a dozen EVs under 25,000. Average car costs are misleading, the mean is a more important number.
They usually compare it to cars of a similar size, instead of similar price. and yeah, when you’re buying a car of the same size that’s 5k cheaper, you’re getting less car.
The problem with auto reviews is that they are all advertising. They never mention reliability as a concern. Australia killed off local GM and Ford production and they brought in Chinese EVs two years ago. Consensus already is that they don’t last.
BYD’s biggest advantage is the government subsidies it gets from China. In the EU, they get tariffed to protect local automotive companies from unfair competition (I.e nation-state supported automotive companies that can literally sell their cars at a loss). Thus, BYD loses its appeal.
Canada here. Most of the middle-class can’t afford new cars either. Trucks are big like RV’s now and it’s almost like buying a house.
Better how? Because Australians disagree.
I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with Elon Musk unironically promoting nazis.
And this is on top of BYD being pieces of shit themselves. And their cars too
BYD cars are budget, but solid.
They’re covering up dozens of billions of debt, despite even more government subsidies… But the cars are solid
Yes the financial situation around electric cars in China is rumored to be very weird. Weird as in unsustainable.
We may see bankruptcies in the Chinese car manufacturing industry. The Chinese government has tried to turn it down, but AFAIK with little success.
The competition in China is insane, and they all use every possible financial trick in and off the book to survive.
Their cars really aren’t. We rented one in Scotland and it was really nice and felt like any other car I’ve driven.
A few days rental tells you nothing about the quality and reliability of a vehicle. Neither do automotive journalist reviews. They never talk about reliability. Australians are not happy with BYDs, even after only 2 years.
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Australians are not happy with BYDs, even after only 2 years.
Source?
I’m Australian with a BYD and I still like ours.
This guy should be sued into oblivion by shareholders.
Shares are still irrationally high based on vaporware.
Elon is a BYD marketing asset
I kinda wish Elon was a Chinese agent and Trump was really a Russian agent. It would make more sense at least.
But instead we have two people making the exact same decisions that a state agent would do to sabotage the US and it’s industries but it’s all because of their absolute incompetence instead. Which is far less exciting and far more pathetic.
I kinda wish Elon was a Chinese agent and Trump was really a Russian agent.
Instead of them both being Saudi agents? JK these guys have many owners.
Old and busted vs new hotness
