Tesla vehicles now dominates luxury segment in Europe, outselling flagship gas-powered German cars

The Tesla Model S has been dominating the luxury segment in its home turf, the US, for a few years now, but it had yet to surpass some flagship gas-powered German premium cars in Europe until now.

The Californian automaker’s Model X is also seeing more success in Europe.

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According to market researchers JATO Dynamics (via Auto News Europe), Tesla’s Model S in Europe jumped 30 percent to 16,132 units in 2017.

The firm compares the vehicle to the Mercedes S class, which saw its sales grew 3 percent to 13,359 units, and the BMW 7 series had sales of 11,735 units – down 13 percent.

To be fair, that’s accounting for the entire European market. In their very own home market of Germany, premium German automakers are still beating Tesla in sales.

2017 was also the first full year of sales for Tesla Model X in Europe and it has also made some great strides in its own segment.

According to JATO, Model X sales in Europe last year were 12,000 units, which is about the same as its gas-powered competitor the Porsche Cayenne and about 2,000 more than the BMW X6.

As usual, Norway has been the biggest contributor to Tesla’s success in Europe last year. Electric cars reached a new record high of 52% market share in Norway in 2017 thanks in part to Tesla’s record deliveries and the introduction of a few new models.

In the US, Model S still dominates the luxury sedan segment, but that’s based on estimates since registration data is not yet available.

Electrek’s Take

While it’s impressive that all-electric vehicles so quickly rose to the top of the luxury segment against gas-powered cars, some people have questioned those rankings with some legitimate concerns in the past.

I think it can apply to the way JATO’s data is presented too.

Tesla doesn’t yet have many car models on the market and instead, the Model S and Model X are offered in different wide-ranging configurations, which are all accounted for in sales for each model.

That’s also the case for German automakers, but they also have other models competing on top of it.

For example, some would not only compare Model S to BMW’s 7 series but also to the 6 series, which sold about 6,000 units in Europe last year.

With this said, I think it’s clear that Model S and Model X are both rising to the top of the luxury segment and that automakers all around the world should take notice and accelerate their electric vehicle efforts.

But those numbers should also be taken with a grain of salt.

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