Tesla has now sold and delivered 10,000 vehicles in Ireland, the electric car-maker said on Friday, some nine years after entering the market here.
In a statement, the Elon Musk-helmed electric vehicle (EV) company said there were now around 100,000 Tesla cars on the roads in the Republic, representing around 10 per cent of the total EV market here.
The company, which cut the price of its models in Ireland last year, has battled declining sales in the rest of Europe over the past year.
Tesla posted sales and registration declines in France, Germany and the UK in January. Ireland, where sales doubled in January from the same month last year, bucked the trend.
However, EV sales in Ireland last year were down almost a quarter on the previous year. While Tesla fared better than the overall market, its sales were over 13 per cent weaker in 2024.
On Friday, Tesla said its new Model Y SUV, which is built at its factory in Germany, is now available to order and will be launched to market here in May.
Rear-wheel drive Model Ys will start from €44,990 with the long-range model starting from €49,990.
Earlier on Friday morning, the Financial Times reported that a high-level Japanese group that includes a former prime minister has drawn up plans for Mr Musk’s Tesla to invest in the struggling carmaker Nissan, following the collapse of its merger talks with rival Honda.
The group is hopeful Tesla will become a strategic investor, the newspaper reported, since they believe the world’s largest pure electric-vehicle maker is keen to acquire Nissan’s plants in the US. The factories would help it boost domestic manufacturing in response to Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
Pretax profits at Tesla Motors Ireland Limited doubled to €1.9 million in 2023, rising 101 per cent on the previous year, according to its most recent set of accounts, filed in Dublin last summer.
It said deliveries of its EVs rose by over 250 per cent in the year, largely due to an increase in Model Y sales.
This resulted in an increase in profit after tax of €1.7 million up 105 per cent – or €866,688 – from the previous year.
