“It is influencing the sales figures”: External factors are impacting local Tesla sales as China’s BYD Sealion 7 takes the lead
Tesla’s local management says “a lot of things going on in the world that are outside of our control” have impacted its sales — and its number-one EV sales status — in Australia, describing the impact of Elon Musk and America more generally as “not the ideal scenario”.
Speaking at the launch of the Model Y Juniper (pictured above, awaiting local delivery), a model it is hoped will reinvigorate the brand’s flagging sales, Thom Drew, Country Director for Tesla Australia, was frank about the publicity challenges he is facing.
From an increasingly public, and controversial, global chief in Elon Musk to the proliferation of novelty bumper stickers suggesting owners bought their vehicle before all the controversy, Mr Drew conceded the issues are “influencing the sales figures” — but didn’t mention Musk by name.
“I think in my experience for 10.5 years here, I’ve seen ups and downs of our brand and people’s perceptions of us and EVs and whatever that may be,” he said.
“And look, it’s not the ideal scenario that we’re in right now, but I think our focus on the product and how wonderful it is and how it really does solve the needs of our target segment is something that we’re going to be pushing very strongly to make sure that the market remembers that, and try and get it back on point to product-focused.”
Being “product-focused” is also the overall strategy to mitigate the global noise, with Mr Drew keen to seperate the product from the people.
“Look, we have recently expanded our marketing team, and we want to do a better job of educating around our products, and EVs in general,” he said.
“So really bringing it back to product, and even our heritage. I know it seems like a funny thing to say, but our 15-year heritage in Australia is something to differentiate us from all the competition that’s coming in. Obviously, we understand the market.
“I think there’s a lot of things going on in the world that are outside of our control that are influencing some of the sales figures at the moment. I’d like to think that … it is a strong enough product that we can remind the market of why we’re number one, why it has been the world’s best-selling car over the past few years, and hopefully get us back there.”
There is a lot riding on the metallic shoulders of the new Model Y, with Tesla sales in freefall — sales were down 75 per cent in April, year on year. At least some of that is no doubt owing to the fact that the old Model Y was about to be replaced.
The result has been the toppling of the Model Y from the top of the sales charts by the BYD Sealion 7 in April and BYD, Kia and MG all sell more cars to dump Tesla back to fourth overall for the month – although it remains Australia’s top-selling EV brand for the year so far.
“We’ve been saying it since the beginning of the year that we’ve had a gap since we started taking orders, which was in January, for the new Model Y,” Mr Drew says.
“We’ve been selling through our run-out stock of the existing Model Y, and deliveries of this vehicle actually start (now).
“(Order) look very healthy. We’ve had a really good response, particularly with the launch series that we started with. So yeah, we’re in a good position.”
