News

Tesla Model 3 trails Volkswagen Golf in Europe’s best-selling car chart

  • Model 3 was just a few thousand units off beating VW Golf to top spot in charts
  • European market in June down 14 per cent on same month in 2019
  • Total car registrations in Europe last month stood at 1.26m

Time 8:28 am, July 30, 2021

The Tesla Model 3 shot to second place in June’s best-selling cars chart in Europe in a market still depressed by the Covid-19 pandemic, new figures show.

Data from Jato Dynamics reveals 1,268,683 new cars were registered last month – 13 per cent up on June 2020 but, of more importance, down 14 per cent on June 2019 when 1.47m cars were registered.

The company says despite a strong positive rebound at the start of the year, the European market has slowed ‘substantially relative to the growth recorded between March and May’.


The volume for the first half of 2021 totalled 6.41m units, up by 27 per cent year-on-year from 2020, but 23 per cent lower than in H1 2019.

Pure-electric and plug-in hybrid cars recorded a new record total market share of 18.5 per cent – up from 8.2 per cent in June 2020.

EV registrations were 126,000 while PHEVs totalled 104,000.


Fiat, Tesla, Skoda, Volkswagen and Ford gained the largest market share in the BEV market while Cupra, Jeep, Volkswagen, Renault and Seat posted the highest market share gains in the PHEV market.

Jeep’s new plug-in models accounted for 30 per cent of its total volume in June, compared with 0.5 per cent in June 2020.

Cupra’s sales of low emissions vehicles jumped from zero per cent in June 2020 to 58 per cent last month, while BEV and PHEV models made up 72 per cent of MG’s total volume.

The Volkswagen Golf remained top of the pile in the top-sellers chart, notching up 27,247 units, equating to a 2.15 per cent market share.

Despite the increase of 12 per cent from June 2020, volume fell by 27 per cent when compared with June 2019 – when its market share was at 2.52 per cent.

The Golf was followed by the Tesla Model 3, which registered 25,697 units taking the year-to-date total to 66,350 units, making it the most popular electric vehicle in Europe, and the 25th best-selling model in the general rankings through to June.

The Model 3 was the top-seller in Austria, Norway, Switzerland and the UK, and hit the top 10 in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden.

Felipe Munoz, Global Analyst at Jato Dynamics commented: “The conditions are not yet ideal and far from a total recovery. In the mid-term, It is not clear whether the market will reach pre-Covid levels or not”

James Batchelor's avatar

James – or Batch as he’s known – started at Car Dealer in 2010, first as the work experience boy, eventually becoming editor in 2013. He worked for Auto Express as editor-at-large and was the face of Carbuyer’s YouTube reviews. In 2020, he went freelance and now writes for a number of national titles and contributes regularly to Car Dealer. In October 2021 he became Car Dealer's associate editor.



More stories...

Auto Trader Advert
Server 108