Tesla registered 1,548 new cars in Norway in October, its best October ever there, and finished as the country’s top-selling brand by just 55 cars over Toyota. Registrations also jumped 248% in Sweden and 34% in Denmark. On the same day the numbers came out, Tesla Europe announced a 12-stop public tour for the Cybercab, starting in Zürich on Thursday.
Norway: a photo finish with Toyota
Norway’s road traffic information council, OFV, said 15,725 new passenger cars were registered in October, up 41.2% from a year earlier and the most in any October in more than 30 years. Battery EVs took 98.8% of the market. Tesla’s 1,548 registrations were up 130.7% and gave it a 9.8% share, beating its previous October record of 1,348 from 2024. Toyota followed with 1,493 and Volkswagen with 1,308.
It came down to the last week. Tesla had only 125 registrations in the first 18 days of the month, OFV said, then 1,074 between Oct. 26 and 31, nearly one in five new cars registered in Norway in those six days. Tesla doesn’t usually do well in the first month of a quarter, as Elbil24 pointed out. Part of the reason may be the calendar. The government’s budget proposal would cut the VAT break on EVs again at New Year, adding 37,500 kroner (about $4,070) in VAT, and Elbil24 says many buyers are moving their purchases up to beat it.
The Model Y was again Norway’s most registered car, with 1,429, almost twice the 725 of the Toyota bZ4X in second place. The Volkswagen ID.4 was third with 553.
The other headline in OFV’s release was China. Chinese brands took 22.5% of new cars in October (3,534 vehicles), their highest monthly share ever, up from 16.9% a year earlier. Xpeng was the fifth-largest brand with 932 cars, and BYD had 816. At home in China, BYD sold more than 300,000 EVs in a single month for the first time in October (our China October story). “More than one in five new cars is now from a Chinese brand, and the number has almost doubled in a year,” said OFV managing director Geir Inge Stokke.
Sweden and Denmark
In Sweden, Mobility Sweden reported 24,660 new passenger cars in October, up about 2%, with battery EVs jumping to 51% of the market from 36% a year earlier. Tesla registered 463 cars, up 248.1% from just 133 in October 2025, split between 328 Model Ys and 135 Model 3s, according to Breaking The News, citing Mobility Sweden’s data. Toyota grew 7.7% to 2,142, while Volvo fell 24.2% to 3,973.
Denmark was the weak spot. Tesla’s registrations rose 34%, but its share was only 0.73%, behind BYD, Leapmotor, Xpeng and MG, which each took between 1.6% and 5.5% of the market, Reuters reported, citing data from bilstatistik.dk. Reuters said the region-wide rebound was helped by easy comparisons with a weak October 2025, higher fuel prices, incentives and steady EV demand. “Northern Europe is quite open to the new players as long as they are efficient EVs,” analyst Felipe Munoz told the agency. Tesla said in October it ended the third quarter with its largest passenger-vehicle order backlog in four years.
Cybercab’s Europe tour
Tesla Europe posted the tour on X on Monday at 5:24 PM JST (3:24 AM ET / 12:24 AM PT): “Cybercab is back. Starting November 5, experience how we are building the future of autonomy.” The post listed 12 stops.
- Zürich, Switzerland (Auto Zürich): Nov. 5–8
- Bratislava, Slovakia: Nov. 20–21
- Düsseldorf, Germany: Nov. 20–21
- Prague, Czechia: Nov. 27–28
- Hamburg, Germany: Nov. 27–28
- Warsaw, Poland: Dec. 4–5
- Berlin, Germany: Dec. 4–6
- Bucharest, Romania: Dec. 11–12
- Munich, Germany: Dec. 11–12
- Budapest, Hungary: Dec. 18–19
- Brussels, Belgium (Brussels Motor Show): Jan. 8–17
- Vienna, Austria (Vienna Drive): Jan. 14–17
Most stops are at Tesla stores, with three at auto shows or events, according to TeslaNorth. It’s a display, not a ride. Tesla hasn’t mentioned rides, local sales or a Robotaxi timeline in Europe, where its supervised driver assistance is still being approved one country at a time (it reached a tenth EU country with Latvia last month). The car has already done this circuit elsewhere. It toured Japan in September and has just been shown at China’s import expo in Shanghai (our story).
The EVX Take
The Norway table is a good read for Japan. Add up the Japanese brands in OFV’s top 30 (Toyota 1,493, Nissan 364, Subaru 306, Suzuki 227, Mazda 165, Lexus 107) and you get 2,662 cars, about 17% of the market. That’s behind the Chinese brands’ 22.5%, but it’s a real comeback. Toyota had only 62 registrations in Norway in October 2025, and this year it has the second-best-selling model, the bZ4X, plus the new Urban Cruiser (415) and C-HR+ (299). Subaru went from zero to 306 with its new EVs, and Suzuki from 6 to 227. Norway has been an early test market for Japanese EVs that reach showrooms in Japan later. For Tesla, the takeaway is that the Model Y still wins in markets that buy on price and efficiency, but in Denmark the Chinese brands have already passed it. And a Cybercab tour of a dozen European cities is good marketing, but it doesn’t get Tesla any closer to a European Robotaxi permit.
Sources: OFV (Norway), Elbil24, Motor, Mobility Sweden, Breaking The News, Reuters (via Euronext), Tesla Europe on X, TeslaNorth, Tesla Japan (PR Times). Not a Tesla App had not covered these numbers at the time of writing.
— The EVX News team
Featured image: A new Tesla Model Y with Norwegian plates parked in Sandvika, near Oslo (June 2025). Photo: Andrzej Otrębski / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped).
