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On the bright side, the No. 1 car sticker on German Amazon right now is: "I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE ELON WENT CRAZY."
Should be "I bought this before I realised Elon is crazy" instead.
Honestly, the Bolivia coup tweet should have been enough.
Poetry.
Need to be update to "I Bought This Before Elon Went Nazi".
Germans use this word more responsibly than americans.
Where is the line, according to Germans? I would have thought “supporting German far right parties and doing a sieg heil (‘ironically’, ‘unknowingly’, or not)” is pretty close, yeah?
Just because I think Elon Musk is a cunt, doesn't mean I want a sticker with the word cunt on my car.
Yeah, no doubt why the first move of his administration is mass deportation.
Tesla sales in Germany will drop again in 2025, and it's politically related.
Germany is a smaller market than the US/China for Tesla. Secondly EV sales have fallen worldwide, so stats stats and damned stats!
EV sales didn't drop by 41% worldwide though, stats, and stats!
Germany is definitely a smaller market than US/China but it's not an insignificant market that can be ignored, losing in it is missing on profits.
I mean, many Germans consider the AFD, which naughty ol' Mr Car supports, to be a Neo-Nazi party.
They do, but when you deliberately make a Nazi salute it's pretty evident that you're part of the baddies.
Part of this is probably that Germany is in a recession. Overall EV registrations are down 27%, and with Tesla skewing higher in price, it would make sense they're more impacted in an economy where people have less money to spend.
Doesn't feel like a Tesla-specific issue to me. No matter how much people dislike Musk's antics, it probably only explains a small part of this.
> Doesn't feel like a Tesla-specific issue to me.
It is a Tesla-specific issue: "...With a share of nearly 10 percent of all EV registrations, Tesla dropped to third place in Germany in 2024, after already ceding its pole position in 2022. Total EV registrations fell 27 percent to 381,000, a development that was partly driven by the end of e-car purchase premiums in late 2023.
However, some carmakers bucked the downward trend: Germany’s BMW overtook Telsa by registering just over 40,000 cars and claiming a market share of over 11 percent. Swedish brand Volvo also greatly increased its registrations, although at a lower total volume of only about 14,000 registrations. Germany’s largest car company VW defended its leading position in the country’s EV market with roughly 62,000 registrations and a market share of over 16 percent..."
It's expected that German brands are popular but that even Volvo gains so much ground is interesting. Is it due to the zero import tax between EU countries? Are those Volvos still even made in Sweden (or EU)? In the US, it seems like Hyundai/Kia have gained a lot of ground, along with non-Tesla US brands like Ford.
I think Volvo only had one electric car until last year; they now have about five. That probably accounts for it; they're growing from a very low base.
The actual report, linked from the article, hints that it is a Tesla specific issue.
https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Zulassungszahlen-des-Kraftfah...
Whatever you buy, you buy a part of lifestyle and self definition. If you buy a Tesla today in Germany, you will be identified as alt right. And these are the people which may habe fewer financial ressources and cant afford one.
> Whatever you buy, you buy a part of lifestyle and self definition
And people on average have their car for 10 years.
It's not hard to see why people would not want to take the risk on such a big decision.
And even if I'm a serene, ascetic monk who is completely immune to trends and marketing, without a care in the world about other people judging me on my possessions, and I make my decision on purely objective grounds?
Well, I've still got to think about resale value. Being indifferent to car colour at a personal level means I'd choose silver, not barbie pink.
I really like how just few year back and definition was "happy green left wing" and Musk did bait and switch on all those people.
Maybe people will start thinking twice before they buy shit :)
I honestly think most people don't care. Especially to cause a 41% drop.. If someone calls me a nazi in the LIDL car park for driving a Tesla I'd honestly think it's because of my shiny bald head, not the car.
But what if you were sorta on the fence about getting an electric car anyway?
What if you have a diesel car today, and getting another is the familiar, low-risk, low-cost option - whereas getting an EV is the responsible, ethical, do-your-bit-to-make-the-world-a-better-place option?
When the EV comes with a side order of nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration - it's no longer the choice that makes the world a better place.
Kinda, sorta yeah. If I'm split between a Tesla and SOMETHING ELSE, be it an electric MG, CNG Golf, Petrol MX-5 or Diesel A3 it'd play a role but that's too much of an edge case for 41% (of course it's a combination of things but still)
Teslas are unique enough to where it feels like if you want a Tesla, you want a Tesla. It's not like deciding between the Audi, Skoda, VW or Seat trim of the 90% same car when you want a normal ICE econobox.
I can’t speak for most people, of course, but in my environment, which consists of above average wealthy people interested in technology and the environment - i.e., your core Tesla target audience - nobody wants to be associated with Elon Musk in any way anymore. A friend sold a Tesla to get an electric Porsche two years ago, just because of Elon.
It’s usually me who still defends his skills as a CEO, but I also would never buy a Tesla car. I actually don’t think the competition is that strong, but I can’t be associated with a guy who makes a gesture eerily similar to a Heil Hitler at Trumps inauguration. No car can be that nice.
Edit: I’m from Munich, BMW hometown, live in Stockholm and have many friends in London. Interestingly I felt his reputation in my London circles fell even before it did in Germany and Sweden.
> Interestingly I felt his reputation in my London circles fell even before it did in Germany and Sweden.
He was making a nuisance of himself in British politics for some time before he got into German, which may be a factor.
I get the dislike for Musk politically but I guess I'm just too broke or something to understand it affecting purchasing decisions that much.
When I buy something I usually look at the product, company history of fucking over consumers and price. I don't really care if the CEO/CTO/CFO/COO/owner was caught at every Diddy and Epstein party to date when it comes to my purchasing decision if his company's product is the best fit.
It only plays a role if I have two equally good products to decide between.
Especially for expensive purchases since I'm not about to burn even a weekly salary to not increase some executive I dislike's worth by the equivalent to him of a prechewed piece of store brand gum.
I think the environment in which you grew up have an impact on that kind of choices. We were told basically all our life, especially during the socdem "third way" era, that we should vote with our wallet if we weren't happy. And the moment we started earning money, we started doing that. Then the same idiots who kept saying "vote with your wallet" suddenly started crying about "cancel culture".
My generation was taught to vote with their wallet more than the previous ones, and probably it is the reason behind Tesla declining sales. Some of use are voting him out.
PS: And by the way, people who ever said "vote with your wallet" or something of that effect like "consumers have made their choice", and _then_ complained about cancel culture, and not made the link themselves are idiots.
“Voting with your wallet” has absolutely nothing to do with “cancel culture”. Lost in translation?
Cancel culture is basically boycotting, unless it's different in the US?
To be more precise, I thought cancel culture is what you get when you boycott in a high information, attention economy. I used to boycott lactalis. I'm now able to find all of it's offshot brands, that I now boycott too. They have a few years ago, pushed a paid promotion to national influencers. I blocked them and all their channels. I am voting with my wallet and my attention.
Unless i missed the point of 'cancelling', isn't it just that boycott and block?
You're most likely right. I grew up in eastern europe where essentially up until around my birth/shortly after the fall of communism there was nothing to buy outside of necessities anyway so "vote with your wallet" wasn't a topic really. You even needed connections to get basic construction materials like sand, wood and cement. The lesson for my generation was "Study so you don't (have to) work.".
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I think it's mostly about BMW electrifying their lineup. People have options now if they want a premium EV.
Tesla sales dropped in Australia 17% in 2024.
And if you exclude them the overall EV market grew by 32%.
It definitely is the combination of Chinese competition and Musk's antics.
I honestly don’t think Tesla sales would have dropped if it was a sound economic decision. But BYD is so much cheaper. If you need a car now, Musk antics just push you over the edge. I get to save a few thousand dollars and not give my money to this lunatic.
As an Australian in the market for an EV, who used to be very pro-Tesla, I can tell you there is zero chance I'm buying a Tesla. It would have to be by far the cheapest on the market, and even then I'd hate myself.
I bought a brand new EV in 2024 for 30k.
I love it. it gets me to work and back, and the shops for free.
So very glad i didnt overshoot and buy a tesla.
And there was an artifical bump in 2023 due to regulations, which pulled forward demand, some sold to other EU countries and companies never bought many Teslas while most new car sales in Germany have been fleet sales since forever
When I read the article it is "connecting dots" with Musk’s political ambitions have damaged the image of Telsa as a progressive and environmentally-friendly company in Germany and elsewhere.
So article has thesis and numbers were playing nice - whether political ambitions moved the numbers or there is something more substantial seems like it doesn't matter for the author.
BMW and Volvo saw increases, and would generally be operating in the same sort of price ranges as Tesla.
As someone who owns a Model 3, I hate how Musk constantly comes up when talking about the car (and never in a positive light). Frankly I find the brand so damaged now because of his behavior, that this will be my last Tesla. I don't want to be pushed into an "right wing" category simply because of a purchase decision I made 5 years ago.
Sure there are other factors, such as more competition, and overall a slowdown of adoption of EV cars, but I have am fairly certain that Musk is one of the big factors of this sales drop. Price/value wise I still find Teslas incredibly attractive. This would be an interesting topic for a big survey if my opinion is in any way representative.
I find myself in the same boat, where I am increasingly concerned that people will identify me in the political spectrum of current days based on the car I chose to buy in 2019.
A major concern I would feel is that my car acts as a spy station for Musk and the CIA or whatever. Note, 0% hyperbole here.
The Tesla cars like beep and flash the headlights and record you when you walk to close. In some sense they are already doing it.
I would short the antenna to ground or whatever if I had a Tesla car. LLMs can transcribe everything you and your passangers says and email to Musk.
"Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars" - https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
Oh ye forgot about that. I guess the CEO has hailed him self out of the closet since then too to add some extra spicy flavour to the coorparate customer integrity policy.
> I don't want to be pushed into an "right wing" category simply because of a purchase decision I made 5 years ago.
Looks like bullying people works. Use enough shaming language and normal people will generally fall in like e whether they agree or not.
Not really, but, like a lot of people buying EVs, I care about what impact my lifestyle has on the environment and society in general. And I can't (In good conscience) support that company anymore.
Oh absolutely. No question. Definitely.
Yes, no one has money and electricity prices are too high. We all know of course what could fix the German energy crisis. The German party that Musk supports polls at 22% and wishes to reopen Nord Stream.
The rising popularity scares the established parties enough to suddenly support immigration controls. Also, suddenly Denmark gave a permit to Russia to seal Nord Stream 2 and possibly repair it. Naturally this is opposed by Poland, who wants to dismantle Nord Stream completely while keeping its own transit pipelines intact. The hypocrisy in the oil/gas business knows no bounds.
Are you talking about the party that wants to tear down all wind turbines (among the cheapest way to generate power), in favor of coal and nuclear (among the most expensive ways to generate power) for purely ideological reasons?
The seal has nothing to do with repairing it.
That is not what the press thinks:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-europe-about-to-switc...
"The Danish energy agency says it approved the repairs because it is ‘obliged under international law to permit the establishment and operation of pipeline facilities on the Danish continental shelf’. The proposed works will, according to the agency, involve installing specially designed waterproof caps on the two blown-up pipes of Nord Stream-1 and one of the pipes of Nord Stream-2. That will allow the flooded pipelines to be pumped dry and – potentially – raised from the 90-meter-deep seabed and repaired. The cost of the patch has been estimated at €622 million (£521 million), according to Nord Stream 2 AG’s administrative receiver, the Swiss-based Transliq AG."
Moreover, if it really had nothing to do with repairing it the permission could have been given a long time ago, right?
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Newly-minted sock puppet
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Tesla is great in few areas but overall it’s such a crappy car so no wonder germans caught up to it, they do have a bit of an option with their own cars.
Spoken like someone who doesnt have one and never drove a German car before. I have switched from BMW (and I drove a lot of them, my dad used to sell them).
All ICEs are Rube Goldberg machines, especially the high-performance brands. It's a miracle of engineering that they run at all.
So many miracles… seems statistically improbable no?
ICEs do need far more servicing to stay safe and functional on the road vs an electric, and this is doubly true for high performance vehicles. They have a precision machined block of metal, creating hundreds of explosions per second, lubricated and liquid cooled by hoses that degrade and slip with the vibration, using turbos and superchargers to milk out performance, exhausting gases, driving a multigeared transmission, synchronised by perishable belts, with gaskets and sealants holding the shuddering mess all together. Miracles, all of them.
Don’t know why this is being downvoted. I really wanted to get a BMW. The total price itself was no issue for me at all, but I just couldn’t justify paying a premium for a car that in parts feels bad. The software stack is horrible.
Got a Skoda instead. Its software is also horrible but at least it was a bargain.
As long as it supports Android auto/car play and has physical control for important stuff, I (and most people I know) don't care about software. It will be obsolete in a few years anyway.
Note that that is also, for all intents and purposes, a German car.
Software being bad in a car is not nice, but it's not as bad as having reliability issue on the car pieces itself, like Tesla has.
Tesla consistently ranks middle of the pack in unbiased reliability rankings. Given that an electric car has ~10% of the moving parts as an ICE, middle of the pack is pretty bad, but from a customer perspective middle of the pack isn't bad.
It's not middle of the pack in price either. I remember seeing this survey where Telsa was right next to Dacia in terms of reliability despite the very different price tag.
Guys, there is no Tax benefit / Umweltbonus in Germany anymore, and EV sales also plummeted as hell in the country.
People just want to buy whichever is the best price/quality EV out there, they dont care who or what the CEO says most of the time.
This is not politics, is economics.
Disagree. Teslas used to be the car of choice for your average Green party voter. It’s the voter class that can afford this car. Elon is a persona non grata in these circles, and the alt right (on average) can’t afford this type or car.
The average green party voter does not really drive. They live in cities and take public transport. On average of course.
Anecdata: I am interested in buying an EV. I have completely ruled out getting a Tesla, purely on the basis of Musk's behaviour. I'm in the UK. Given the history, I suspect that many Germans looking for EVs are even more sensitive to his behaviour than I am.
It’s kinda politics, as in Portugal, for instance, you can get a subsidy on pretty much any EV except for a Tesla - and it’s hard to see that as anything other than politically motivated.
Not politics, as I suspect you are probably aware.
In Portugal, electric vehicle (EV) subsidies are available for new battery electric vehicles (BEVs) priced up to €62,500, including VAT. This means that higher-priced models, such as Tesla vehicles, do not qualify for these incentives.
The primary reason for this price cap is to ensure that public funds are used to make EVs more accessible to a broader segment of the population, rather than subsidizing luxury vehicles.
> This means that higher-priced models, such as Tesla vehicles, do not qualify for these incentives.
Is there not at least one Model 3 less than 62K Euros in Portugal?
It seems there are some, so they will qualify.
There are many other incentives by the government, like not paying Vehicle Tax since they do not produce emissions. The incentives are listed here in the page of Tesla Portugal: https://www.tesla.com/pt_pt/support/incentives
Fair enough. The parent was making it sound like the entire brand was excluded.
Comment was deleted :(
> People just want to buy whichever is the best price/quality EV out there, they dont care who or what the CEO says most of the time.
Yes, most people think this way. However, what you have to remember is that virtue signaling is a thing. For years driving a Tesla was both a flex about how much money you made and how you were a good person, "ahead of the curve", and cared deeply about the planet. Whether these people want to admit it or not, a lot of their identity was expressed through the simple act of driving a Tesla.
Now that identity has, to others in their social circle, become synonymous with "Trump supporter" because of Musk. Hence a lot of Tesla's early supporters or "core demographic", if you will, is desperate to either dump their Teslas or make it VERY clear that they will never buy one.
What I haven't seen mentioned here yet - there's also a (smaller) cohort of people who genuinely believed the lies that Musk peddled regarding upcoming self-driving functionality and are unhappy about having been scammed. I anecdotally know someone (not German) who opted for a Ford EV over Tesla, not because he cared about Musk but because he didn't trust it as a car brand in general, which I think is pretty justified.
In my circle I know at least two Swedes who bought Teslas in 2017-2018 completely believing in the "your car will be self-driving and earning money for you instead of being parked", both feel scammed and got rid of their Model S last year, one got a Polestar and the other a Porsche Taycan.
If I know personally two wealthy people who felt conned by this move then, just by sheer statistics, there are many others around.
Yeah, I mean it should be adequately clear now that was a grift.
> With a share of nearly 10 percent of all EV registrations, Tesla dropped to third place in Germany in 2024, after already ceding its pole position in 2022. Total EV registrations fell 27 percent to 381,000, a development that was partly driven by the end of e-car purchase premiums in late 2023.
> However, some carmakers bucked the downward trend: Germany’s BMW overtook Telsa by registering just over 40,000 cars and claiming a market share of over 11 percent. Swedish brand Volvo also greatly increased its registrations, although at a lower total volume of only about 14,000 registrations. Germany’s largest car company VW defended its leading position in the country’s EV market with roughly 62,000 registrations and a market share of over 16 percent. Mercedes reached the fourth rank in registrations with 34,000 vehicles.
Boy a table would really have helped. Finding it difficult to tell from all this text whether this is actually a significant change or not. And whether we even need to look at Musk's personal brand to explain it.
So when will the stock price correct closer to realistic valuation compared to competition? Sales dropping isn't future growth...
> Musk’s political ambitions have damaged the image of Telsa
Is it that, or is it because the Germans have had time to figure out how crappy the build quality of a Tesla is, and are getting more options from other manufacturers?
("Telsa" typo pasted from the original article)
It's multiple factors I believe, aside from this one here's some more:
- German EV government subsidies were reduced considerably (possibly removed?) in Dec 2023
- Other manufacturers are catching up to Tesla in many areas.
not as simple as that, germanys economy is suffering, ev sales are down overall, more ev competitors, most people dont watch musk on the news and care to link the two between tesla and him
Bit misleading reading this on first take, firstly Germany is a smaller market than the US/China for Tesla. Secondly EV sales have fallen worldwide, so stats stats and damned stats!
> Secondly EV sales have fallen worldwide
EV sales are up 25% worldwide in 2024.
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