Following the comments on the concentration of Tesla cars in California, as an investor, I’m wondering how to position the Tesla brand in the UK in Marketing terms. Looking at its sales figures and its early customers’ reviews, it could be argued that in its initial three years of selling cars in the UK, Tesla’s position has developed in a similar way to Lancia and Alfa Romeo in their early days.
Both those brands offered fast, innovative, enthusiasts’ cars with some promise. But did they (as Tesla aficionados are claiming for their brand) revolutionise car manufacturing as we know it?
Alfa sold over 200,000 cars worldwide in a good year and before 2000 looked as though it might carve out a profitable niche in its major markets. Earlier Lancia offered technologically advanced engineering until (literally) the bottom dropped out of its offerings.
Both companies were inexorably overtaken by manufacturers of more reliable cars and had to rely on their home markets for volume as they were overtaken by more competent manufacturers. And now their sales are languishing.
Up to the end of July over 1.4 million new cars were sold in the UK this year. Tesla managed to sell around 2,000 cars (source below). That’s a market share of 0.1% which, hopefully, they may improve by the end of 2019. However their August sales may prove to be a little subdued. One has to ask if their 13 expensive showrooms in the UK are paying their way. On average they have only delivered 22 cars a month so far this year. Apart from in Norway, I’d guess that even the most active European Tesla showrooms aren’t doing much more than double that on average.
And if you look at the inventory of new cars offered by Tesla in the UK it is going up fast. Today if you look at the Tesla UK site it offers 47 new Model S cars for sale (mileages under 20) from stock. And similarly they have 50 new Model X cars for sale from stock. This doesn’t include the large volume of low mileage used S and X cars available immediately.
Model 3 cars are now being offered for sale from stock (5 available on Autotrader which haven’t been sold in the last three weeks.) Plus if one looks at car lease sites, there are a number of Model 3 lease offers available from stock. So this suggests that the Model 3 is not production constrained in the UK.
Have Tesla done better in the USA? Total car (incl light pickup trucks) sales in USA up to July were 9.8 million. Tesla have sold under 100,000. That’s a market share of 1 %.
In a few days time we will know the August sales figures. Hopefully Tesla will show an increase in demand? And, of course, there is still time for a few more car carrying ships to reach Zeebrugge before Q3 ends.
regards
Howard
Sources:
Tesla motor club, sales figures for Europe
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads ... ats.61651/Alfa Romeo sales
http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sa ... lfa-romeo/UK new car sales up to end July
https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/US sales figures
https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics ... g_usa_2019
