Tesla sales in Germany dropped 41% in 2024
cleanenergywire.org
cleanenergywire.org
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Because in the mid 80s, Lillian bettancourt purchased a manor in Brittany, a few years after an oil spill that devasted the coast and fisheries. Some locals associated her with her shares in Total, and in Loreal (which she owned and was a beneficiary of a refinery the tanker was going to). They filled her pool with liquid manure, and oyster farmers/regular farmer managed have one of their tractor break down every day on the only road access to her new manor for a bit ore than a month (never the same one). This is what i would call very mean, and should be avoided. If the persons you talked about did not suffer a tenth of that, frankly, they ought to toughen up and stop complaining.
He was making a nuisance of himself in British politics for some time before he got into German, which may be a factor.
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.
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.
5 years ago maybe. But no-one believes the self-driving promises any more, every car has screens instead of buttons now, and wireless updates are not something that people care about at all, especially if those updates just break stuff that used to work perfectly (eg. ultrasound parking sensors).
What was really unique about Tesla was that they had this image of a technologically advanced automaker that will stop climate change and lead us into a clean energy utopia. It was a fancy car you could buy without a bad conscience.
But with the Cybertruck it's clear they are leading us into an electrified Mad Max world instead. Kinda obvious in retrospect that a guy selling flame throwers is not about peace love and happiness....
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.
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.
Maybe people will start thinking twice before they buy shit :)
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.
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.
Looks like bullying people works. Use enough shaming language and normal people will generally fall in like e whether they agree or not.
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 love it. it gets me to work and back, and the shops for free.
So very glad i didnt overshoot and buy a tesla.
BYD’s launch was aggressive with several new models and significantly cheaper pricing.
A 17% fall in the face of such a large step change increase in competition isn’t too bad.
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.
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?
https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Zulassungszahlen-des-Kraftfah...
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..."
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.
It’s obvious to anyone who has watched the video with an iota of common sense that Musk didn’t deliberately make a Nazi salute.
Even the hypersensitive ADL can recognise that.
It's not even a discussion for us. That is fact, you or the ADL (I don't care who they are) can say anything they want, the fact that he did it and can't ignore the meaning of this make him a Nazi. Adding to the context of supporting Neo-nazi political groups and the ideas that he is pushing, there is absolutely zero doubt why he made a nazi salute.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/21/the-gestu...
Elon Musk might be antisemitic, but he's OUR antisemite, so hands off!
https://archive.md/1EV0a (from: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/01/22/elon-musk-nazi-salute-r... )
The gesture he did is both mechanistically different, and contextually different.
It’s only people who are convinced a priori that he’s a Nazi who seem to contort his awkward gesture to fit that narrative.
Tesla sales in Germany will drop again in 2025, and it's politically related.
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.
For reference, Germany was the third biggest market for Tesla (1/10 of China). France was 4th (1/10 of China too) and Canada was 5th (1/11 of China).
It's not the end of Tesla, but it's politically related.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-03/tesla-sal...
https://roadgenius.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/tesla-mark...
Honestly, the Bolivia coup tweet should have been enough.
Got a Skoda instead. Its software is also horrible but at least it was a bargain.
If I know personally two wealthy people who felt conned by this move then, just by sheer statistics, there are many others around.
> 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.
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.
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.
Is there not at least one Model 3 less than 62K Euros in Portugal?
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
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.
EV sales are up 25% worldwide in 2024.
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)
- German EV government subsidies were reduced considerably (possibly removed?) in Dec 2023
- Other manufacturers are catching up to Tesla in many areas.