Here’s What Tesla’s Current Market Share Looks Like Globally, In the US, In China, and In Europe
Tesla recently came extremely close to reaching its year-end goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles globally in calendar 2020. The company has been investing fantastic amounts of capital into new European and Chinese facilities to build its vehicles, presumably for the markets in which those factories will reside.
Tesla fans are rightly enthusiastic about Tesla coming so close to achieving its goal. This is the second year that Tesla’s stretch goal was more or less met by its delivery volume. Investors are clearly pleased. The equivalent value of any one of its cars eighteen months ago would now make the stockholder a millionaire, or darn close.
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Automobile enthusiasts rarely step back and try to see the global, or even market-wide, view of an automaker’s contribution to the total. We thought we would illustrate where Tesla stands today. This story will be fun to look back on in one, five, or ten years when Tesla’s present construction has begun to turn out automobiles.
Tesla Delivery Detail Sources
Tesla is funny about revealing where it sells its cars, and which models make up the mix. So, for just a smidge more of a breakdown, we turned to CleanTechnica. The publication is openly pro-battery electric vehicle. The author of the story who made these market breakdowns of Tesla’s sales is also CleanTechnica’s director, chief editor, and CEO. And the lucky man is also a Tesla stockholder according to his bio. So we feel that is safe to say if he is making any mistakes with regard to the numbers, they likely favor Tesla.
Tesla's Global Market Share Charts and Data
First a simple verbal overview of Tesla’s approximate global market share. In 2020, a flat year for the industry overall, and an up year for Tesla, the company’s market share is roughly 0.8%. Or a little less than 1% of the total automobiles produced on Earth last year. How did we arrive at that? We simply divided Tesla’s half-million vehicles into the approximately 62 million Statista says were produced. Another way to look at it is that Tesla made about 1/124th of the automobiles.
Tesla US-Market Delivery Data
The next Tesla market share number shows Tesla in a more favorable light. The American market was down in 2020 and Tesla’s US deliveries were up by roughly 6%. In the United States, roughly 14.5 million vehicles were delivered in 2020. Of those, Clean Technica estimates that Tesla was responsible for 204,000. That equates to 1/71 of the vehicles delivered in the US. And by vehicles here we specifically mean passenger vehicles. That should equate to about 1.4% of the total if our goze-intahs are right. Is one out of every 71 of the vehicles produced impressive to you? That is entirely subjective.
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Tesla China-Market Delivery Data
In China, Automotive News says about 25 million new vehicles were delivered in 2020. Clean Technica estimates that Tesla was responsible for 148,349 of those units. Thus, Tesla delivered 1/168 of the Chinese-markets vehicles. If our calculator isn’t lying to us, that equates to 0.6% of the total.
Tesla Europe And Other Market Data
Europe is a bit trickier. After all, what exactly is the “European car market?” Does Turkey Count? Most of its people are in Europe, but most of its landmass is in Asia. How about Russia which has a similar oddness to it? What about the United Kingdom and Ireland? Ireland is on an island, but most of the U.K. is connected by a tunnel, but not part of the mainland of Europe. Kooky, right? We don’t know exactly what to compare Tesla’s “European” sales to. Clean Technica says this of the remaining portion of Tesla’s total global deliveries: “(Tesla deliveries in) Europe is in a solid third, at 98,995 estimated deliveries, while APAC (28,615) and Canada (22,459) complete the tally.” Sources we have seen say that the “European” car market is about 4.5 million units annually. Let’s just skip the market share part here for Tesla. It’s tiny. We will point out that Forbes had a lot of fun in December saying, “Tesla Sales Have Fallen Off A Cliff In Europe’s “Greenest” Car Markets In 2020.” You can read the author’s thoughts on that yourself.
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So, having now heard what percentage of sales Tesla captures globally, feel free to throw us a comment and predict what Tesla’s global, US, Chinese, and “European” market share percentages will look like in one, five, and ten years. We would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to work backward from total capacity under construction.
John Goreham is a long-time New England Motor Press Association member and recovering engineer. Following his engineering program, John also completed a marketing program at Northeastern University and worked with automotive component manufacturers. In addition to Torque News, John's work has appeared in print in dozens of American newspapers and he provides reviews to many vehicle shopping sites. You can follow John on Twitter, and view his credentials at Linkedin