Last year, overall vehicle sales in Europe barely ticked up, rising 2.2 percent from 2024. EV sales, meanwhile, increased by 29 percent, bringing market share to an impressive 19.5 percent.
That’s according to data from automotive analyst JATO Dynamics, which finds that the big winner has been Volkswagen. Last year, its EVs outsold those from Tesla for the first time as sales of VW’s electric offering grew by 56 percent, while Tesla’s shrank by 27 percent.
To put that into concrete numbers, VW sold 274,278 EVs to Tesla’s 236,357. And that’s just the VW brand itself—the automaker also owns Skoda (in 4th place, with 171,703 sales), Audi (5th place, 153,845 sales), Cupra (15th place, 79,269 sales), and Porsche (21st place, 32,715 sales). Not a bad effort, considering just over a decade has passed since VW’s Dieselgate scandal.
Imo they also has their charging network, which was a differentiating feature. But imo it was clear that eventually it was something that becomes less important the wider general adoption progresses.
Not sure, but I think they also were early or at least better than legacy car makers with over the air software updates.
But nowadays I don’t see any standout thing that sets them apart. Tesla got the early lead due others imo facing the inventors dilemma, but they didn’t progress further and now others caught up.