Tesla sold a record number of Model 3 cars last month - and no one thought to write an article about it

Tesla sold at least 27,852 Model 3s in March, the most in any month ever.

You may have missed that because it hasn't been in the news. To my best knowledge, I am the first one writing about it. If you just want to look at the numbers, they're at the end of this article.

Model 3's record isn't exactly a surprise, given than many European customers received their long-awaited cars last month. Among the rich nations, the USA is the worst place to sell electric cars. And it's not a bad thing. It simply means that the American government doesn't actually punish its people for using cars as much as Western European governments do.

In Germany, gas is over $5 per gallon. In the Netherlands, it's more than $7. Consider also the fact than in Europe, any car with an automatic gearbox and a reasonable acceleration time (typical features of EVs) automatically qualifies as "premium" or "sporty", respectively (highway-capable cars that do 0-60 in 15 seconds still find customers in Europe). And that Europeans are used to paying more that Americans for compact and subcompact cars. Then you have countries like Norway and Denmark, where cars themselves are taxed like cigarettes (that's a great analogy); in Norway, these taxes do not apply to EVs - Norwegian politicians did everything possible to eliminate gasoline/diesel cars and replace them with long-range electric cars. The problem? There were no long-range electric cars being sold there (except luxury cars).

Surprisingly, you could buy reasonably priced electric cars (think Chevrolet Bolt) in the US, but not in Europe where they were needed. In fall 2017, GM succeeded in preventing Norwegians from being able to buy Bolts at all, and kept telling funny stories that the worldwide demand for Bolt was about 20,000 per year (they missed a zero or two somewhere). It wasn't about preventing financial losses, as some people in the US apparently believe, because if GM raised the price in Europe by $10k or even $15k, there still would be European customers willing to buy it.

So, the electric vehicle revolution in Europe was delayed by more than a year. Until last February and March, when the American invasion came.

Unlike GM, Tesla actually wanted to sell their electric cars - and flooded the European market.

And it happened - we've got a new monthly sales record for Model 3.
Now let's give journalists and analysts some time to process that.

The data I was able to compile - for March 2019, and only limited to Model 3 (I saw posts that got Model 3 sales confused with overall Tesla sales):
Norway: 5314
Netherlands: 2195
Spain: 396
Austria: 703
Sweden: 1005
France: 1153
Denmark: 306
Portugal: 315
Italy: 232
Finland: 140
Belgium: 540*
Switzerland: 1094
Germany: 2224
Luxembourg: 60*
== Total for Europe: 15677 ==
Data for Belgium and Luxembourg is conservatively estimated as 80% of official Tesla registrations (because in all the other countries on the list, Model 3's share among Teslas was over 80%). For all other countries, these are official registrations of Model 3.

Then you have the USA:
== Total for the USA: 10175 == (insideevs.com)

== Europe + USA: 25852 ==

In Canada, there were 2350 Teslas - all models - sold in March 2019 only, and 2230 in December 2018 only, so we can assume that in Canada:

• at least 2000 Model 3s were sold in March 2019
• more Model 3s were sold in March 2019 than in December 2018, or the difference was negligible.

== Europe + USA + low estimate for Canada: 27852 ==

In December 2018, previously the best month for Model 3, 25250 were sold in Europe and the USA.
In March 2019, 25852 were sold in Europe and the USA - 602 more.
The margin of error for the Canadian data is small enough that we can declare March 2019 the winner vs. December 2018, worldwide.

The number of additional Model 3s that could have been sold in Asia & Pacific in March 2019 is unknown but the car was not sold there at all in 2018.