Elon Musk speaks out amid concerning reports about Tesla: 'Misleads constantly'

New data shows that Tesla's stranglehold on the European electric vehicle market is slipping, but CEO Elon Musk isn't pleased with how that has been portrayed.

As Electrek reported, Tesla's sales for August were down in Europe by 22% when compared to August 2024. Though the company's sales are down, the drop was not as steep as in most other months this year, which have typically been 30-40% below 2024 figures.

"Tesla's decline is continuing," Electrek wrote, "but it has slowed down."

Still, that decline comes while overall EV sales have increased by 30% across the continent, meaning Tesla has lost considerable market share to competitors.

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In particular, Chinese automaker BYD sold more EVs than Tesla across EU countries, marking the second straight month of that occurrence. But Musk took offense to a Reuters report about that, instead choosing to blame the messenger.

"Reuters misleads constantly," he wrote on X.

Musk suggested the story was unfairly negative because it only used numbers from the EU and not from across all of Europe, where Tesla actually outsold BYD during August.

But, as Electrek pointed out, nothing in the Reuters report was false. BYD did outsell Tesla in the EU, as Reuters accurately reported. And though Tesla sold more units across Europe, its sales were down year over year, while BYD's were up 215%.

Over the first eight months of 2025, Tesla sold 133,857 cars across Europe, a decline of 32.6% from 2024. BYD sold 95,940 cars during the same period, a 280.1% increase over 2024.

And it's not just Europe. In August, a record 146,332 EVs were sold in the United States, accounting for nearly 10% of all new-car sales. Despite that, Tesla sales fell by 6.7% in comparison to August 2024, and the company's share of the market fell to a record low 38%.