Tesla has won in France: the most catastrophic May for 3 years

For months, Elon Musk hammers that “Demand is not a problem” For Tesla. Except that in France, the figures of the automotive platform (PFA), the reference organization for statistics in the automotive sector in France, tell a completely different story.

The American manufacturer, who bet on the launch of His model revisited there that we had tested To straighten the bar in the second quarter, just hit a wall. And this wall is the reality of a cooled European market, coupled with a manifest disinterest of French motorists.

In May 2025, Tesla only sold 721 cars in France

The month of May 2025 will thus remain in the Annals of Tesla France, and not for good reasons. Barely 721 vehicles delivered throughout the territory, against … more than 2197 the previous year. Clearly: a tumble of 67.2 %.

Over the first five months of the year, Tesla accumulated 8,277 cars registered, against 15,685 over the same period in 2024, a decline of 47.2 %. The trend is therefore heavy, installed, and clearly disturbing for the brand in France. Moreover, in May 2025, Tesla represented only 0.58 % of registrations in France, against 1.55 % a year earlier. On January-May, its share fell from 2.14 % to 1.23 %. For a brand supposed to embody the leadership of the electric, it is a slap.

And this time, the Californian firm can no longer cut itself behind the pretext of the design change of Model Y. The electric SUV is indeed produced at full speed at the Gigafactory in Berlin, and the stocks are there.

So what’s going on? The French automotive market has generally bent 12 % over the period, but Tesla fell five times more. In hollow, this reflects a specific disaffection towards the brand, undoubtedly accentuated by the drop in purchase aid, the rise of competitors like Byd Or Renault who has won the car title of the year with its R5and an increasingly divisive image around his boss.

Worse, this poor performance is not an isolated accident: it is part of A declining trend on the whole European continentwith a month of May which even promises to be less than February in overall volume. For Tesla, whose high -end positioning no longer benefits from a price or technological advantage as decisive as in 2020, the time is for discounts, not for promises.