Tesla is losing ground in Europe, US banks and rising yield curve

A month ago, we commented on our Saxo Market Call podcast that Tesla was slipping in European EV sales ranking for October. We pointed out that this was an ill sign since the European EV market is the biggest in the world and that the EV penetration rate of new car registrations in Europe is two times larger than China and five times larger than the US. Some clients wrote to us saying we were missing the timing effects on Tesla sales and that they were typically larger in the last month of quarter. Time will soon tell how big this effect is, but in the meantime, we have got November figures and they still show that Tesla is losing ground.

In November, plugin (hybrid and pure EV) registrations rose 198% y/y compared to the overall car registrations in Europe being down 14% y/y. This took the plugin market share to around the 10% mark with pure EV accounting for 5.4%. What is most striking is that Tesla, despite its $805bn market value dwarfing all other carmaker in the world, is losing ground against local players. Renault Zoe was once again the best-selling pure EV car with the VW ID.3 close after (see table). Number three in November was the Hyundai Kona EV and then on the fourth spot came the Tesla Model 3. While this should worry Tesla shareholders it is even more striking that the Model S and X are not in the top 20 ranking despite direct competing models such as Audi e-tron being on the list.