Tesla registered 367 vehicles in Germany in July, a 66.9% decline from a year earlier, according to data released on Thursday by the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).
The result gave Tesla a 0.1% share of Europe’s largest automotive market and ended a five-month streak of triple-digit year-over-year gains.
Sweden, Italy and Portugal recorded drops of 60%, 77% and 69% respectively, while France and Denmark moved the other way with gains of 86% and 52%, as the company prioritizes incentive-rich markets.
July’s total also represents less than 0.5% of the 78,609 fully electric vehicles registered in Germany during the month, a segment that grew 61.7% from a year earlier and reached a 29.3% share of all new cars.
Germany’s overall market registered 268,068 passenger cars in July, up 1.2%, while BYD grew 365.4% to 5,240 units — outselling Tesla by a ratio of more than 14 to one.
The Chinese carmaker sells both hybrid and fully electric models with a substantially lower average selling price. BYD‘s entry level models are priced below €30,000, equivalent to $34,600.
Reversal After Record First Half
The July figure marks an abrupt break from the trajectory Tesla had built through the first half of the year.
Registrations climbed from 1,301 units in January to 9,252 in March, followed by 3,149 in April, 5,111 in May and 7,768 in June, a sequence that quadrupled second-quarter volume to 16,028 units.
First-half registrations of 28,857 had already surpassed the company’s full-year 2025 total by the end of May.
Even after July’s collapse, year-to-date registrations stand at 29,224 units, up 192.2% from the same period of 2025 — a year in which full-year German sales fell 48% to 19,390 units amid the Model Y changeover, rising competition and fallout from chief executive Elon Musk’s political involvement.
The monthly pattern within 2026 offers part of the explanation.
January and April — the opening months of the first and second quarters — were also the weakest of their respective quarters, reflecting Tesla‘s practice of shipping GigaBerlin output to distant export markets early in each quarter before concentrating local registrations toward quarter-end.
July sits at the start of the third quarter, but at 367 units the trough runs far deeper than the intra-quarter wave alone would suggest, coming in at roughly a quarter of January’s level and a ninth of April’s.
A Split July Across Europe
The German print extends a pattern already visible across the continent.
Tesla registered its weakest month of the year in Norway and Spain, with Norwegian registrations falling 97% to 24 units and Spanish volume dropping 81.3% to 131, while Sweden fell 60%, Italy 77% and Portugal 69%.
France and Denmark moved in the opposite direction, rising 86% and 52% respectively, according to French industry body PFA and Denmark’s bilstatistik.dk.
Norway cut its VAT exemption threshold to 300,000 crowns on January 1, and Tesla‘s response — a bonus of up to 50,000 crowns for orders delivered by March 31 — pulled months of demand into the first quarter.
Germany complicates the first thesis, however.
The country’s reinstated federal purchase incentive, a €3 billion program paying private buyers between €3,000 and €6,000 retroactively to January 1, makes Germany precisely the kind of subsidized market Tesla would be expected to supply first.
GigaBerlin Ramps
The July slump coincides with an announced expansion at the company’s Grünheide factory outside Berlin, Tesla‘s only European assembly plant.
Plant chief André Thierig said in June that GigaBerlin was running at roughly 5,000 vehicles per week with its supply chain maxed out, and that output would climb above 6,000 units weekly from July — a 20% increase in Model Y production.
The facility, which employs around 11,000 workers and exports to more than 30 markets, has been hiring approximately 1,000 new employees and converting 500 temporary workers to permanent positions to support the ramp.
Tesla also plans to invest approximately €100 million to begin battery cell production at Grünheide in 2027, with an initial annual capacity of eight GWh.
A Market Moving Without Tesla
The broader German market underlines how unusual the July result is.
Fully electric vehicles outsold petrol cars by a wide margin during the month, with combustion models falling to an 18.9% share, down 29.7% from a year earlier, while diesel slipped to 11.8%.
Average CO2 emissions of new registrations dropped 15.1% to 91.2 grams per kilometer, and the mini and small-car segments — the entry points most exposed to the new subsidies — grew 25.0% and 9.9% respectively.
Every structural condition Tesla spent years waiting for in Germany arrived in July, in a month when the company barely participated.
Software Push Continues
The registration slump lands in the middle of Tesla‘s campaign to bring Full Self-Driving (Supervised) to European roads.
The Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark have approved the system since April, while Germany remains under review and the EU’s Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles ended its June 30 session without a vote.
This week, Tesla began emailing owners across EU markets free two-month FSD (Supervised) trials expiring October 3 — days before the committee’s expected October session.
Globally, the company delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter, a 25% increase that beat consensus by more than 74,000 units, with Europe widely credited for much of the upside.
