Tesla’s market share in Europe keeps crumbling, as China reclaims top spot | Hacker News Reader

Tesla’s market share in Europe keeps crumbling, as China reclaims top spot

shroommarkets.com

31 pointsremote_phone11 comments

Article here: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-market-share-in-eur...

It's also a terrible title. China is the biggest market globally but Volkswagen has the biggest marketshare in Europe.

Is 'shroommarkets.com' really a good source for this information?

> There were 1,619 registrations of Tesla’s battery-electric vehicles in 18 key European markets in January,

1600 cars? In an entire month? Across most of the EU? Isn't that a tiny rounding error for a continent with 280,000,000 cars?

Tesla vehicles are simply too big. Family sizes, people, cars, roads, parking spots, houses, garages are all smaller here.

Performance is basically pointless if you're driving in a European city where you'll rarely exceed 60km/h.

I'd beg to differ. I can see this in places where say a Ford Ka, Fiat Panda, Citroën 2CV, Seat Ibiza is a great size car (please add on more recent car models lol!). Say France, Paris specifically, where people leave their handbrakes disengaged in case someone has to park in between you and the guy in front of you.

But that's not the only size car you have in Europe. We had a Skoda Fabia Kombi back when we lived in Germany. Meaning a small station wagon. When going back for vacation we'd have Skoda Octavia Kombi, VW Passat Kombi (large station wagon) etc. and those were totally fine size wise.

An Octavia Kombi is ~4.7m X ~1.8m (similar for the Passat) while a Tesla Model 3 is ~4.7m X ~2.09m as per a random Google Search. So yes, the Tesla will have about 30cm less space for you to get out of your car in a parking spot. Autobahn lanes are ~3.75m wide.

Well not quite. Yes, the Model 3 is ~29cm wider. But to get out of the car, you have to open the door, and the door of a typical “safe” car is 15-20cm thick. Remember that the door has to swing outward more than its thickness just to make any space at all to exit.

Vehicle width can really make a big difference in tight spaces.

I did implicitly assume that all car doors are essentially about the same width (i.e. never thought about that).

So are Tesla doors also much thicker or what exactly are we talking? And how much are we talking. Now I really wanna see parking spot widths (which I know are much smaller than in NA in Germany and probably many if not all European countries).

Come to think if it, the Fabia in Scotland was already 'fun' to deal with on some smaller roads out in the country ;)

Sarcastically driving in Chinese megacities is going to be even slower because of all the traffic jams. It's partially about vanity.

The thing I love about Europeans are they already on the other side of the vanity curve, while the rest of the world is still at its peak.

there are many electric vehicles in europe: bmw, seat, vw, hyundai, audi, porsche, nissan. these probably sell better than in the US because they don't have the best range but that's OK for some EU countries.

also, some countries have good charging infra (non tesla), so you're not forced to buy tesla for the infra.

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