South Korea registered 34,904 imported passenger cars in September 2026. Tesla took 12,372 of them — more than BMW and Mercedes-Benz put together, and the eighth month in a row it has led the import market.
The number underneath that is the interesting one. Of Tesla's Model Y registrations, more than three in four were the six-seat Model Y L — the long-wheelbase version Europe still cannot order.
September in Korea
| Brand | Registrations |
|---|---|
| Tesla | 12,372 |
| BMW | 6,066 |
| Mercedes-Benz | 5,477 |
| BYD | 2,614 |
| Volvo | 1,414 |
| Lexus | 1,064 |
Tesla's 12,372 is 35.5% of imported passenger-car registrations, against 34.9% in August. The top two models in the entire import market were both Teslas:
| Model | Registrations | Share of all imports |
|---|---|---|
| Tesla Model Y L (6-seat) | 8,690 | 24.9% |
| Tesla Model Y Premium | 2,467 | 7.1% |
| Mercedes-Benz E 200 | 2,133 | 6.1% |
So the Model Y line accounts for 11,157 registrations, and 78% of those are the L.
A note on what these figures do and do not say. They are KAIDA import registrations — cars brought into Korea. Hyundai and Kia, which build at home, are not in this table, so "35.5% of the market" means 35.5% of imports, not of Korean car sales.
What Korea is buying
The fuel split of those imports is the other striking column:
| Powertrain | Registrations | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Battery-electric | 18,181 | 52.1% |
| Hybrid | 13,620 | 39.0% |
| Petrol | 2,861 | 8.2% |
| Diesel | 244 | 0.7% |
More than half of Korea's imported cars last month were battery-electric, and under one in eleven burned petrol.
It is worth being careful about why Tesla leads here. Korea's subsidy points system excludes several Chinese manufacturers, which shapes the field Tesla competes in — but it does not mean Chinese cars are absent. BYD finished fourth on 2,614 registrations, ahead of Volvo and Lexus.
The part that is about Europe
Europe cannot buy a Model Y L. Korea bought 8,690 of them in one month.
That gap has been open all year, and this site has tracked the signals that it was closing: a camouflaged car testing in Germany in July, then the badge appearing in a European configurator's source code in August. Writing about Europe's July EV share, this site said the number to watch was September — the month the quarter closed and the Model Y L was expected to reach European configurators.
September has closed. It did not.
Korea now supplies the clearest available answer to the question that matters for a European launch, which is not whether the car is any good but whether buyers choose it over the standard Model Y when both sit in the same showroom at different prices. Korean buyers chose the longer, six-seat, more expensive one by better than three to one.
Europe's Tesla line-up answers the three-row family with a seven-seat option on the standard Model Y — a third row folded into the existing body rather than a longer car built around one. It is a real variant: France's éco-score tables list it, and price it above the €47,000 cap that keeps it out of the incentive. Korea's September figures suggest the two are not the same product in buyers' eyes.
What to watch
Tesla has not announced a European Model Y L, named a price, or said where one would be built. Giga Berlin builds Europe's Model Y, and a longer variant would be a tooling decision there rather than an import decision.
The useful signal is not another configurator leak. It is a European price list with a second Model Y body on it — and until that appears, the fastest-selling imported car in one of Tesla's strongest markets remains one European buyers can read about and cannot order.