This budget hatch toppled Tesla to become Europe's best-selling model

The Tesla Model Y wasn’t able to claim the title of best-selling car in Europe for a second year running, with the much more budget-friendly Dacia Sandero instead claiming the mantle.

Data from automotive business intelligence firm JATO Dynamics shows 268,101 examples of the Dacia Sandero were registered during 2024, up 14 per cent on the previous year.

The Sandero, which starts from just €12,990 (~A$21,500) in France, was one of only two internal combustion engine-only vehicles in the European top 10.

Overall, JATO Dynamics reports the European new-car market grew by 0.9 per cent, with 12,909,741 new vehicles registered during 2024 across the 25 European Union member states plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland.

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The Tesla Model Y was pushed down to fourth place, slumping 17 per cent to 209,214 registrations. This was the largest drop of any vehicle in the top 36 best-selling vehicles.

Earning a podium finish were the Renault Clio (216,317, up 7 per cent) and the Volkswagen Golf (215,715, up 17 per cent).

Prior to the Model Y snatching the top spot in 2023, the Peugeot 208 was Europe’s best-seller in 2022. This ended the 14-year reign of the Volkswagen Golf.

While the Model Y finished fourth overall, it was still comfortably Europe’s best-selling electric vehicle (EV).

In second place was the Tesla Model 3 (112,789, up 12 per cent) while the recently launched Volvo EX30 came in third with 78,032 registrations.

After several years of growth, EV market share shrunk by 0.3 per cent to 15.4 per cent. That’s quite a turnaround from recent years, where annual sales growth was anywhere between 28 per cent and 107 per cent each year between 2019 and 2023.

JATO cites a lack of clarity about incentives for EVs, as well as concerns about low residual values and charging infrastructure as the reason for the decline in 2024 – something it suggests could be reversed in 2025 as more affordable EVs are launched.

EVs still had greater market share than all powertrain types bar petrol vehicles, which still account for roughly a half of the total market (48.4 per cent, with market share up 0.5 per cent).

Hybrids were the only other powertrain type to grow their market share in 2024, up 1.9 per cent to account for 11.8 per cent of the total market.

Tesla was the 16th best-selling brand in Europe, with Dacia sitting in ninth spot (569,736 registrations, up 3 per cent).

Volkswagen took the top spot with 1,354,966 registrations – up one per cent – followed by Toyota (916,522, up 12 per cent), BMW (770,249, up 6 per cent), Skoda (757,000, up 12 per cent) and Mercedes-Benz (709,721, up 1 per cent).

Other key highlights from the JATO Dynamics data include:

• Chinese-built cars outsold those produced in Japan, the UK and Turkey, sitting in sixth place
• SUVs accounted for almost 54 per cent of total registrations with 6.92 million sales
• Kia and Ford fell out of the top 10 brands
• Almost one in two hybrids registered was a Toyota or Lexus
• Tesla outsold Fiat, Lexus outsold Honda and BYD outsold Alfa Romeo
• 88 per cent of cars registered in Norway were EVs, the highest of the 34 countries included in the dataset
• Serbia had the lowest EV market share at 0.8 per cent

“Overall, when you consider the range of challenges facing Europe’s automotive industry, the results for 2024 are not overly negative,” said Felipe Munoz, global analyst at JATO Dynamics.

“However, you would expect any other industry to have shown significant signs of recovery by now, and there is very little evidence that the automotive industry will return to the pre-pandemic reality.

“The higher cost of vehicles, the rise of working from home, inflationary pressure on wages and the emergence of new transportation solutions are among the reasons why Europeans have stopped buying brand new cars.”

JATO notes Europe’s car market has shrunk by almost 2.9 million units since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.