U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla‘s sales in Europe were down for a 13th consecutive month in January, while its biggest Chinese rival saw another surge.

Data published Tuesday by industry lobby group ACEA, or the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, found that Tesla’s new car registrations fell to 8,075 in January, down 17% from a year ago, representing the 13th consecutive month in which sales have shrunk.

Tesla’s market share across the European Union, Britain, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland fell to 0.8%, meanwhile, down from 1% in the same month last year.

It marks another “very weak” start of the new year for Elon Musk’s company, Rico Luman, senior sector economist for transport and logistics at Dutch bank ING, told CNBC by email.

“Tesla’s image has deteriorated in Europe last year and people have much more choice now with the range of new affordable EVs (including those of BYD and others like MG and ZEEKR) entering the market, while Tesla lacks new models,” he added.

Tesla’s focus on autonomous driving, rather than introducing new vehicles and expanding its range of mass models, is likely a factor too, Luman said.

“Another thing in Europe is that large numbers of first generations of Tesla’s are remarketed at the moment (after being leased for 4-6 years), this has driven second hand prices down,” Luman said, adding that there’s an abundance of competitively priced Tesla’s available on the used market.

Tesla has been beset by challenges in Europe, including robust competition, particularly from Chinese car brands. It’s also struggled to shake off reputational damage from Musk’s rhetoric and close relationship with the Trump administration after the U.S. president returned to office last January.

Musk spent nearly $300 million to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump to a second term and subsequently led a tumultuous initiative to slash federal agencies. Protests erupted at Tesla dealerships across Europe at the height of Musk’s involvement with the White House.

Musk’s relationship with Trump later cooled, following a bitter online feud with the U.S. president.

Shares of Tesla were 0.5% lower in premarket trading on Tuesday. The company is off by around 11% year-to-date.

AI robots will exceed the working population within a few decades as more firms adopt AI agents and continue to squeeze costs, a former Citi executive warned on Monday.

Rob Garlick, Citi Global Insights’ former head of innovation, technology, and future of work, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that as leaders continue to prioritize profitability, their human workers will be left in the dust.

“We have a leadership system in the economic terms and business terms that celebrates profitability,” Garlick said in a conversation with CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick and Ben Boulos.

“When you marry profitability up with the technology progress, we have the biggest trade in history coming, which is basically that artificial intelligence will be able to do more and more, better and better, cheaper and cheaper, and that will be able to substitute for people.”

Garlick, who recently authored “AI – Anarchy or Abundance? Why the Future of Work Needs Pro-Human Leaders,” explained that his previous research at Citi showed that the number of AI robots is going to skyrocket as a result of these business decisions.

“We’re going to go over the next couple of decades to more moving robots than the working population, and then you add on agents, little agents, and it is going to explode,” he added.

AI robots ranging from humanoids to domestic cleaning robots and autonomous vehicles are forecasted to increase to 1.3 billion by 2035, according to a 2024 Citi report led by Garlick. The number of AI robots would quickly increase to over 4 billion by 2050, per the insights.

The Citi report even measured how long it would take for a robot to pay for itself through the money saved by replacing a human worker, for example, a $15,000 robot would break even in 3.8 weeks for a $41 an hour human job, or 21.6 weeks for a $7.25 human job. Meanwhile, a robot that costs $35,000 would have a payback time of 8.9 weeks for a $41 an hour human job.

“You can already buy a humanoid today, which gives you a payback period versus human workers of less than 10 weeks,” Garlick told CNBC, citing a figure from his book. “Humans can’t compete on this basis.”

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report showed that 80% of leaders expect AI agents to be largely integrated into their AI strategy within the next 12 to 18 months. AI agents are a type of software program that can make decisions and complete tasks without much human direction.

Meanwhile, McKinsey & Company’s global managing partner, Bob Sternfels, noted that the company currently employs 20,000 agents alongside 40,000 humans, in an interview with Harvard Business Review. A year prior, the company only had 3,000 agents, and Sternfels predicts that in 18 months from now, there will be an equal number of employees and agents.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also shared similar views at the World Economic Forum’s flagship conference in Davos last month, saying that AI will likely surpass human intelligence by the end of this year.

“My prediction is, in the benign scenario of the future, that we will actually make so many robots in AI that they will actually saturate all human… there will be such an abundance of goods and services because my prediction is that there’ll be more robots than people,” Musk said.

Fears around AI replacing workers have mounted in the past year as major firms, including Amazon, Salesforce, Accenture, Heineken, and Lufthansa, have cited the technology as part of the reason for eliminating thousands of roles.

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director at the International Monetary Fund, told CNBC in January that AI is “hitting the labor market like a tsunami” and warned that “most countries and most businesses are not prepared for it.”

In the U.S., AI played a role in almost 55,000 layoffs in the U.S. in 2025, according to December data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

However, some leaders are striking a more positive tone. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang predicts that the “AI boom” will create six-figure salaries for the workers building AI and chip factories. Huang said the technology will boost skilled trade work, such as for plumbers, electricians, construction, and steel workers.

Tesla is suing California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to reverse a ruling that found the automaker violated the law by falsely promoting its cars’ self-driving capabilities.

The suit comes two months after the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings determined that Tesla engaged in false advertising, and said the DMV could temporarily suspend the company’s licenses to manufacture or sell cars in the state.

The DMV instead asked Tesla to clean up its marketing language. By Feb. 17, the agency said Tesla had done so appropriately and no license suspension would be required.

But Tesla, which is banking much of its future on robotaxis, wants the DMV to go further. In their complaint, dated Feb. 13, attorneys for the automaker alleged that the agency “wrongfully and baselessly” labeled Tesla a “false advertiser” for its prior use of the terms “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving.”

Tesla now uses the brand name “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” to describe its partially automated driver assistance system, and it sells it only on a subscription basis. In the past, Tesla packaged partially automated driving features in Autopilot standard, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving tiers, and it offered some customers “beta” or early access to new features, which are not yet fully debugged. It sold the systems for a single up-front fee.

The DMV did not immediately provide a comment. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long promised investors and customers that the company’s cars would be upgraded over time via over-the-air software updates that would turn them into robotaxi-ready vehicles. That hasn’t happened yet, though the company’s systems have become more sophisticated.

After sales of its electric vehicles declined last year, Tesla’s future success hinges largely on its ability to deliver driverless systems that make their cars safe to use without a human at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

Tesla is now testing a handful of automated vehicles in its Robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas. Last week, the company announced the start of production of its forthcoming Cybercab, a two-seater designed without a steering wheel or pedals, in Texas.

Tesla has for years presented its systems as if they were safe to use without an attentive driver. For example, in 2018 Musk appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” driving in a Model 3 with Autopilot engaged and correspondent Lesley Stahl in the passenger seat. Musk kept his hands off the wheel and told Stahl that he was “not doing anything,” while the car was driving itself.

However, Tesla’s owners manuals specify that drivers should not use FSD (Supervised) features without paying attention to the road.

In filings with California’s OAH, lawyers for the state’s DMV wrote that Tesla’s marketing for “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” falsely suggested the cars are capable of operating autonomously.

Tesla’s attorneys alleged that the DMV never proved consumers in the state had been confused about whether its cars were safe to drive without a human at the wheel.

When Tesla used those brand names, the company’s attorneys argued, “It was impossible to buy a Tesla equipped with either Autopilot or Full Self-Driving Capability, or to use any of their associated features, without seeing clear and repeated statements that they do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

In a separate class-action lawsuit that’s winding its way through California courts, customers who purchased FSD expecting their cars to be upgraded into robotaxi-ready vehicles over time are asking for their money back.

Tesla was also held partly liable for a fatal crash involving Autopilot. During the trial, the Tesla owner said he had dropped his phone while driving and scrambled to pick it up, but thought the car’s Enhanced Autopilot system would brake if an obstacle was in the way. The suit resulted in a $243 million verdict against Tesla to be paid to the family of the deceased and an injured survivor of the crash.

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