BYD sold more pure battery electric vehicles than Tesla for the first time last month, a "watershed moment" for the region's car market, JATO Dynamics said.

When you look at sales at the brand level, things get a little worse for the American automaker. Volkswagen sold more EVs than anyone else in Europe last month, increasing by 61 percent to 23,514 units. As for Tesla? It fell to 11th place, with just 7,165 sales in total, a 49 percent decrease year on year.

Despite the EU's imposition of tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, registrations of such cars increased 59% in April from a year earlier.