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Tesla’s shareholders are ready to vote tomorrow on whether to give Elon Musk an even more vast slice of the company in an effort to keep him focused on selling electric vehicles. Currently, the trolling tycoon appears a little obsessed with the UK, a place he appears to conflate with Middle Earth, which investors may or may not take into account when making their decision. What they ought to take into account is how many cars Tesla sold last month.

Although Tesla only publishes quarterly sales figures and does not divide those up by region, slightly more granular data is available from some countries via monthly new car registrations. And the numbers for October, when compared year on year to the same month in 2024, should be alarming.

Sales fell by double-digit margins in Sweden (89 percent), Denmark (86 percent), Belgium (69 percent), Finland (68 percent), Austria (65 percent), Switzerland (60 percent), Portugal (59 percent), Germany (54 percent), Norway (50 percent), the Netherlands (48 percent), the UK (47 percent), Italy (47 percent), and Spain (31 percent).

Only France bucked the trend—there, a new subsidy helped bump sales by 2 percent year on year.

Things in China were better, but not by much; Tesla sales dropped 9.9 percent in October compared to last year. And that’s bound to be very bad news for the bottom line; even with record sales in Q3, Tesla saw its margins shrink, its costs climb, and its profits begin to evaporate.

A common factor in both Europe and China is that Tesla now faces a huge amount of competition for EV buyers from both established OEMs and new Chinese startups. Tesla has failed to expand its range beyond the Models 3 and Y, both of which look increasingly stale despite recent cosmetic tweaks.

But the outlook is good?

Unfortunately, the automaker’s viable product pipeline appears as empty as ever. Tesla’s chairperson, Robin Denholm, has conceded that a steering wheel would probably be necessary to sell the Cybercab to the public, but even so, a two-door, two-seat EV with none of the space efficiency of a Japanese Kei car or European microcar (or even a Smart) seems like a hard proposition to turn into a bestseller.

Nearly a decade after its supposed reveal, the second-generation Roadster remains nothing more than artist renderings. And even if the Tesla Semi appeared competitive, the anti-environmental movement championed by the government whose election he helped fund makes such fleets far less likely in North America now.

And there are some potentially expensive liabilities on the horizon. Tesla lost a very expensive Autopilot wrongful death lawsuit, with dozens more in the wings. The company may face a very costly recall in China and Australia to replace hundreds of thousands of car computers with newer hardware that can actually run its FSD feature. And there’s the potential for another costly recall to replace door handles on the Models 3 and Y with a design that can’t trap occupants in a burning Tesla.

This may not bother Musk too much. Electric vehicles increasingly appear to be a distraction compared to building AI and humanoid robots. For his bank balance’s sake, he’ll have to hope everyone invested in Tesla ignores everything else and believes in that hype.