The biggest winners from Tesla's sales slump

Tesla is losing ground at home and globally as its sales continue a downward slide, ceding market share to automakers that have flooded the zone with new models in recent years.

General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen were some of the biggest winners in the US in the first quarter of 2025, during which the EV market grew by 11% to nearly 300,000 cars sold, according to first-quarter data from Cox Automotive.

In Europe, homegrown automakers such as BMW and VW have seen their electric vehicle businesses skyrocket, while Chinese brands like BYD and Geely have also made a major push into the continent.

General Motors and other big automakers push back in the US

Tesla sold 128,100 vehicles in the United States during the first quarter of the year, down 8.6% from the same time last year and a whopping 21% decline compared with 2023, Cox said.

Despite seeing its share of the US EV market fall from 51% to 44% over the past year, per the Cox data, Tesla remains the biggest player by a wide margin.

But a group of traditional automakers, led by Ford and GM, has been staging an offensive against Tesla for years.

GM has launched roughly a dozen Cadillac-, Chevrolet-, and GMC-branded EVs over the past year, ranging from the $34,000 compact Chevy Equinox SUV to the $300,000-plus ultraluxurious Cadillac Celestiq sedan. They've helped it gain an 11% market share after sales grew 94% year over year in the first quarter, according to Cox.

When you include Honda and Acura, which entered the EV market last spring with a pair of GM-made SUVs, General Motors and its partners now hold 16% of the market, Cox said.

Elsewhere, VW is up 55%, BMW is up 26%, Nissan is up 23%, and Ford, which owns about 8% of the segment, saw a 12% sales increase.

Other big winners include VW, with sales up 55% year over year; BMW, up 26%; Nissan, up 23%; and Ford, which owns about 8% of the segment and saw a 12% sales increase, Cox said.

Lower-volume players in the EV space also saw explosive growth. Porsche, Toyota, Subaru, and Volvo sales were up 250%, 196%, 173%, and 173%, respectively, year-over-year, Cox said.

German and Chinese EVs are on the rise in Europe

In Europe, Tesla's decline has been even more dramatic.

During the first two months of 2025, the automaker's sales collapsed nearly 43% from the same period last year, according to industry data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association amid a growing backlash against CEO Elon Musk and his endorsement of the German far-right party Alternative for Germany.

Tesla's fall comes despite overall European electric car sales growing by nearly 30% over the same period, a European Automobile Manufacturers' Association data analysis found — and some of Tesla's German rivals appear to have benefited from its brand implosion.

Volkswagen said last week it had more than doubled its EV sales in Europe in the first quarter, while the luxury brand BMW reported a 64% rise in sales of fully electric vehicles.

That poses a big problem for Tesla in the company's third-biggest market, where it sold about 327,000 electric cars last year — and it could be about to get a lot worse.

The Chinese automakers BYD, Xpeng, and Geely are expanding aggressively in Europe. While their market share is still tiny, early data suggests that BYD is beginning to eat into Tesla's sales.

BYD outsold Tesla in Italy and Spain in the first quarter of 2025 and closed the gap on its rival in the UK and Germany, according to data compiled by the market research firm Argus Media. They recorded huge surges in sales even as Tesla's market share plunged.

The Warren Buffett-backed Chinese EV giant exported a record number of cars in the first quarter as it took its fight against Tesla global.

Polestar, Geely's Swedish EV brand, reported a 76% increase in global sales during the first quarter of this year.