Tesla sales dropped 60% in Germany | Hacker News Reader

Tesla sales dropped 60% in Germany

electrek.co

133 pointsZeljkoS220 comments

A lot of this was down to the huge sales of the Model Y in Europe in the past year or two with subsidized loans at rock bottom rates. The lowest I saw was 0%. Obviously today that's no longer the case. Also the MY is due to be replaced so a lot of would be Tesla buyers are holding off. But I don't doubt that some part, perhaps even a large part, of this is down to personality.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens when the new Model Y is launched and how much they retake of this lost market share. My guess is, some, but not nearly all of it. People held their noses and bought the Tesla when they were at a huge (interest rate) discount. Tesla obviously can't give people long sub 1% loans and make a profit in 2025.

For me personally (in Europe, looking for a new EV this year) I'd be happy to pay more north of a $10k premium to not have the car that says Tesla on it.

There's also been a significant increase in competition. BYD are competing agressively across the continent, backed by Chinese subsidies, and European automakers are increasing their EV offings. For example, Volvo went from having 1 EV to 6 EV models available.

Also keep in mind that many European countries entered a recession over the past year. Also keep in mind that the cost of electricity has tripled since Putin attacked Ukraine.

The partisan types will ascribe Tesla's sales fall to Musk's politics, but I suspect that's actually a small effect compared to some of the broader market dynamics.

Sales are also way down in Australia [1].

[1] https://electrek.co/2025/02/06/tesla-sales-crash-in-another-...

All of these same market dynamics exist in Australia as well, except Australia’s recession is a per capita recession, not an aggregate recession.

> Tesla obviously can't give people long sub 1% loans and make a profit in 2025.

I think this is not the right way to look at it. Essentially, Tesla sells the car for a price that is higher than the sum of all the input costs (the margin). Say this margin is around $10k per car. If the factories have more inventory, they could give customers a $5k discount, but they could also sell it for the full price but give a sub 1% loan. They probably loan that money for about 3 to 5%. So they only take a hit of a few procent for 2 years meaning $60k * 0.04 * 0.04 = $4800. My point is that a low percentage loan is essentially the same as discount on the purchase price.

Do these continues price decreases mean that things look dire? Based on solely this information, not necessarily. Battery costs are a large part of the cost of the car, and battery costs are consistently coming down. This saves a few thousand dollars per year. So I expect prices to come down each year. That fact alone is not a problem.

Having said that, we know that Tesla's margins have consistently come down for the last 3 years, and we know that Chinese cars become more competitive each year. So things aren't looking great. But again, price declines are expected and not necessarily a problem. I would say market share is the most important metric to look at.

The problem is R&D. Tesla absolutely is not and will not compromise on all that self driving car R&D and other engineering work.

And that's expensive.

Except for not using LIDAR?

...or using consumer-grade parts.

Yeah I’m aware the interest rebate is just a rebate like any other but the cost of such rebates is much higher if the baseline interest is 4% than if it’s 1%. The difference between 0% and 2% is as expensive as the subsidy between 7% and 5% but I don’t think it will sway as many customers

I honestly think a key ceo skill in this day and age is managing to side step every single culture war issue, and unhelpfully for Tesla, Elon seems to disagree with me (though clearly working out for him personally)

Well, I don't think most folks could name a CEO of another car company. So they seem to be doing fine in that category, but maybe not gaining any marketing advantage? I guess a great trick would be for a CEO to have a large social media presence but still side step culture war issues?

> Well, I don't think most folks could name a CEO of another car company.

Yup, and I don’t care. I liked the brand better without the drama queen.

I mean, knowing the CEO of a car company only seems to be working against that car company. He's not exactly known as "The Tesla guy" anymore.

> I guess a great trick would be for a CEO to have a large social media presence but still side step culture war issues?

Most CEO's these days do, yes. Maybe not "large" but a noticeable precense.

Yep look at Sundar Pachai or Tim Cook, they just always go with the flow, that's the way I prefer my CEOs when I invest in corps. It's up to a democracy to fix itself, not corporations. I don't need culture wars in corporations, those need to happen at the voting booths, Washington DC, and protests.

>I don't need culture wars in corporations, those need to happen at the voting booths, Washington DC, and protests.

given America these days: what's the difference? Elon bought the election for much cheaper than Twitter.

According to the more detailed data for January 2025, published by the Kraftfahr-Bundesamt:

  Model 3   272
  Model S    13
  Model X    13
  Model Y   979
  ∑        1277

For comparison the data for January 2024:

  Model 3   695
  Model S    31
  Model X    33
  Model Y  2393
  ∑        3152

Model Y in both Januaries is still a multiple of ~ 3.5 of the Model 3.

Your theory, that people were waiting for the MY refresh doesn’t seem likely. According to my experience most people aren’t as much informed of the inside baseball when a new model arrives. Nerd stuff.

Edit, Sources, the F10 Excel spreadsheets here:

2025: https://www.kba.de/DE/Statistik/Fahrzeuge/Neuzulassungen/Mon...

2024: https://www.kba.de/DE/Statistik/Fahrzeuge/Neuzulassungen/Mon...

What people seem to miss in this discussion: Many Germans get EV cars as company cars because of how they're taxed: Say the car is worth 60k and you're allowed to use it for non-work purposes, then you need to tax 1% of the list price per month (i.e. 600 is added as fictional income to your monthly pay, and you need to pay the tax on that) IF you drive a gas / diesel car. For EVs that is 0.25%, so there was a huge incentive for people to get Teslas.

That law is changing though: The taxation applies only to cars up to €60k list price (most Teslas exceed that by now, even Model 3s with some extras), and as electricity prices have been soaring, charging the EV got really expensive.

Adding to that, interest rates have been increasing in 2022 for the first time in a long time. This means that leasing rates and financing rates skyrocketed. So as another commenter wrote: Buying a new car is one of the least worries of Germans at the moment.

I have anecdotal evidence that at least a part of this is due to Musk's behaviour. My father is in charge of the car fleet for a large German company, and they have decided to exclude Tesla from their fleet because of Musk's recent behaviour. At the same time, they have also decided to go full electric for the entire fleet (no hybrid either).

Most people in The Netherlands too think of Musk the same as Trump. They really, really don’t like the both of them.

Wouldn't it be anecdotal information and not evidence? I always consider those two words together as an oxymoron. I have an educated guess keeping up with European news that it's highly likely Musk's recent attempts to control German politics would be highly frowned upon by anyone not from the AfD party.

evidence is used to support a statement. Information is a more broad term. Information can be evidence, but not always. Meanwhile, almost all evidence can be categorized as information.

> Musk's recent behaviour

For those who might not be up to date on that, parent refers to Musk's nazi salute: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R_6dVlz6mug

I can't tell for the parent commenter but German society is more concerned about him embracing the extremist right in Germany and offering a lot support for free to them in the current campaign.

There's no way it's not a factor. 12 months ago I hated Musk but it would only have had a limited impact on my car choice, I'd still definitely look at Teslas as an option.

Now he's taken over a foreign government to pursue overly fascist goals, being seen in public in a new Tesla is just not something I can consider.

Doing this in Germany would be even more inconceivable.

I can't imagine this is an unusual way to feel.

That AI generated image at the top is so unnecessary... A regular photo of a Tesla would do the job just as well.

I’m guessing cost-saving? No need to license anything.

And ironically AI built this image based on the works of photographers that remain uncredited.

No it is just a (awful) trend nowadays. There are countless free Tesla stock photos: https://unsplash.com/s/photos/tesla

Personally, I like AI photos but I understand the point you’re making.

I was wondering how this compares, the car lobby ADAC [0] has Jan '24 22,474 vs Jan '25 34,498 for new EVs (so 50% more), Jan '24 was apparently a particularly bad month as the subsidies for EVs had just ended, looking at some other stats, Jan '24 was the worst EV month since Jan '23.

Tesla fell from 14% of the market to 4% [1]

[0]: https://www.adac.de/news/neuzulassungen-kba/

[1]: https://www.focus.de/auto/elektroauto/starker-start-ins-neue...

Sales had been reportedly tanking (sic) even before the end of the year.

https://insideevs.com/news/745119/tesla-sales-europe-2024/

I wonder if shareholders will eventually want him out

There are no fundamentals justifying the insane valuation of Tesla. Without the Elon myth (real or imagined) of future returns, the stock price would lose 80-90% of its value. Shareholders are incentivized to not speak up, for now.

If the company became unprofitable to the point of possible bankruptcy, that's a different story.

The issue is that Tesla actually _could_ dominate the American market and several others. They have some quality issues and a big personality issue but if they ditched those and had an iconoclast who wasn't ... an autistic Nazi... at the helm Tesla could be Apple. They have a great product that is hampered by some failures (the personality of their leader, the failure of self-driving, the sizable minority of lemons they put on the sales floor).

But like, Tesla almost has the best car available on the market anywhere. Almost.

They could wipe the floor of any of the existing incumbents. Could.

Doesn't matter to the point at hand. Tesla has a bigger market cap than every other automaker _combined_. Tesla is bigger than the entire auto industry.

There is some justification for that number, based on the theory that Tesla is an energy and AI company with a side hustle in automobiles. But that is pure conjecture that only receives market support because Elon is at the helm.

Any smart shareholder will have sold their share by now. I'd expect all remaining shareholders to have truly bought into the Elon myth.

As a counterpoint, there are several sophisticated investors and large funds holding substantial Tesla positions. I guess their hypothesis is that meme stocks will meme, markets can stay irrational longer than you can afford to stay on the fence.

Sophisticated investors might think they can sell quickly enough if the tide turns.

From what I hear, Wall Street is starting to sell off TSLA stock. But discretely. They gotta keep the hype up so they maximize their sales.

The implicit justification for valuing Tesla now is not "we sell good cars", it is state capture.

Yep, the stock price didn't double immediately following the election because Trump is going to help Elon make better EVs. It's purely about the massive grift and corruption that investors expect Elon to capture.

They've been propped up on the whole "retail trader" "HODL" ecosystem, bolstered by the promise of FSD/Autopilot/Robotaxies making every other car company obsolete.

At some point, that facade is going to collapse. Every time I point this out, I get jumped by a bunch of Tesla fanboys, $TSLA holders and the usual associated crowd.

So, I'm going to list some major problems with Tesla, in brief summaries of no particular order

1) FSD is a half truth. I am genuinely impressed with the progress they've made and I think Tesla is one of the leaders in the field. HOWEVER: their approach to risk (laying it on the owners), their lack of robotaxi operations center, and even the hardware in the vehicles not being capable for true FSD and remote monitoring, means that all Tesla vehicles on the road today will NEVER be FSD/RoboTaxi capable without: major hardware upgrades (expensive per vehicle), substantial backend upgrades for live support (time consuming), and serious hiring of live support (they've gotten started but this will completely change the math on OpEx). [0]

2) They have huge risk around new battery technologies. This has become a global race. If someone (such as Toyota) introduces a genuine leapfrog (which they seem to be conservatively teasing in the usual Japanese way with solid state batteries), then Tesla is in some serious shit. Tesla's investing heavily in R&D, so I think they're probably not screwed on this point, but it will be a major point of contention for them in the near future.

3) Public opinion: Elon has decided to make himself the Conservative of the Year. I, personally am not a conservative, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that he's polarizing the addressable market for a mass market consumer product. This is increasingly true outside of the US.

4) Upper limits of addressable markets, pending infra: charging infra is getting better, but the simple fact is that they're reaching the point of diminishing returns. The end goal is probably something like be an L2 charger (ideally better) at every parking meter and a farm of them in every WalMart parking lot. Much progress is being made, but it will still be many years before it's where electric cars are feasible for - let's say - 80% of the US domestic market. NACS went a long way in alleviating this.

5) Competition from China: China is deeply incentivized by market forces to build electric cars (they do not have domestic oil). Their domestic market is huge and economies of scale kick in even for relatively niche products. They are already eating at the low end of the electric car market. They are also hungry and see designing beautiful and good things as a matter of national pride[1].

[0] While we're at it, Alphabet has invested heavily in companies doing 5g rollouts - which is a requirement for a RoboTaxi in my opinion. Elon seems to be short sighted in his apparent belief that 5g isn't needed, nor a vision hw update, and they can really build a 0-intervention RoboTaxi. Don't get me started on his refusal to include LIDAR. I wish him the best of luck.

[1] I have a lot of complaints about how China and Chinese industry operates, at a moral level. But one must also recognize that as they're late to the table, they are at a disadvantage and they know it. A lot of the things they do that offend and disgruntle western tech people - especially around IP - are frankly, perfectly rational (even if I personally don't like it). The DeepSeek leader Liang Wenfeng put his attitude around China's behavior in a very refreshing manor, which really humanizes a group of people that many like to denigrate:

We believe that with economic development, China must gradually transition from being a beneficiary to a contributor, rather than continuing to ride on the coattails of others. Over the past 30 years of the IT revolution, we barely participated in core tech innovation.We’ve grown accustomed to Moore’s Law “falling from the sky”—waiting 18 months for better hardware and software. Scaling Law is treated similarly. However, these advancements are the result of generations of relentless effort by Western-led technology communities. Because we haven’t been actively involved in this process, we’ve come to overlook its significance.

When was your last long FSD drive and what sort of (safety-critical or not) interventions did you have to make?

The problem is the question itself - the only acceptable FSD is the one I don't have to do any interventions. My mind can wander, I can read a book or watch a movie, or sleep. Only thing I am willing to actually pay for.

Anything less is adaptive cruise control + lane assist (keep & change), no matter how fancy the marketing wrapping on it. "Safety-critical interventions" WTF is that, car trying to kill you and your family and you fighting its bad decisions and for now winning over? The amount they would have to pay me for such alpha-testing to ever drive such vehicle is non-trivial even for tesla.

I don't have to do any interventions on my daily commute and haven't for about six months now. It's a better driver than I am, and has saved the life of a bicyclist that I and another car didn't see (bicycling dressed in black at night).

Do you realize that you are exactly who I’m talking about? One only need to view the many videos on YouTube of ridiculous FSD interventions

Yes, I’m aware it’s supposed to be monitored.

Btw I love the implication in your line of questioning that I haven’t experienced fsd by demanding I give my own personal anecdotes

So here’s three! The last time I experienced FSD was during the December 2024 free trial (12.5 I believe). On one trip, it unsafely botched a merge on Market Street in San Francsico by the Castro (ran out of room and faulted ) Actually, we tried that route because a few years ago, we’d had it completely fuck up by trying to navigate the wrong way down the road. So I supposed that’s an improvement.

Later that week, FSD kept having trouble with a freeway off-ramp around San Mateo and when we did a go around, it tried to pull us into a dedicated bus lane. Well, it did pull through and get to the destination.

And lastly, it consistently manages to navigate into my parking garage and then immediately drive out the other exit.

So there’s your anecdotes. At least we didn’t slam head on into a lamp post.

I'm who you're talking about? I don't believe that you know me.

Anyway, I can only say that I've had an impressively good experience with FSD, which I have put a lot of hours into. But I have noticed the same problem that you have with bus lanes. I disable it when I enter parking garages.

> I'm who you're talking about? I don't believe that you know me.

And yet, I described you in my original post :)

This?

> Every time I point this out, I get jumped by a bunch of Tesla fanboys, $TSLA holders and the usual associated crowd.

You have no basis to accuse me of any of that based on my single question to you. I disagree with you. I politely asked for your personal experience, which differs somewhat from mine. You are being rude.

You’re making my point for me and don’t even realize it. Your anecdotes are worthless and your belief that people couldn’t possibly know what they’re talking about if they havent tried it is ridiculous.

You get the amount of courtesy from me that you deserve.

He is not "conservative of the year". He gave a speech to the far right AfD Party in Germany and called them Germanies only hope.

To give you an idea: at the European level, the group of LePen and Meloni refuses to work with them because they are to extreme. Many regional branches of AfD are under surveillance for strong suspicion of fascist activities. One of their most prominent politicians sued someone for defamation for calling him fascist. The court decided that this was not defamatory because it was in fact true.

Our conservatives are so far refusing to cooperate at all with the AfD.

So Musk is not "conservative of the year" he is a supporter of certified fascists.

> He is not "conservative of the year"

While I agree, he seems to be trying for that title with these stunts. And in his mind, he might think that he is succeeding.

That's giving conservatives a bad name.

It is, it is.

Sadly, yes. But US traditional conservatives aren't really separating themselves from the MAGA parties enough. So in some ways this is self-inflicted.

It's not just a US issue, see also the actions and concerns of the UK Conservative party post-Brexit.

Many traditional conservatives are separating themselves from MAGA. They're just too small a faction and disempowered by doing so.

Ah, but 'conservative' doesn't mean 'conservative' anymore, you see!

(In the US, and to some extent the UK, 'conservative', in political terms, is now usually used to refer to radical far-right policies.)

Agreed, one needs to identify what they think they are "conserving" by recklessly smashing alliances and institutions.

IMHO, it consists of exactly one proposition.

You're right. But sadly, The US only has two parties and we more or less draw a line on Progressive (Democrat) and Conservative (Republican). Meanwhile, in reality both of US parties would probably fall Center-Right compared to EU parties.

But lately people have been more blatantly making a MAGA distinction from Republicans and MAGA is pretty much your AfD party in a nutshell. Except they are running the show in America for at least 2 more years.

> We believe that with economic development, China must gradually transition from being a beneficiary to a contributor,

You say that in future tense. But we also now believe that steep tariffs on Chinese cars are necessary lest they "contribute" too much, too advanced, too cheaply and destroy domestic industries that can't keep up any more.

The EU, and current and previous US administrations believe this.

> new battery technologies. This has become a global race.

"Global" ? One country is far ahead here and again it's China e.g.:

"Can anyone challenge China’s EV battery dominance?" https://www.ft.com/content/1f95d204-ea6a-4cf3-b66a-952362e80...

"Ford Chief Says China Leads US By 10 Years In EV Batteries" https://www.carscoops.com/2025/02/fords-ceo-says-china-is-10...

Sorry, I didn’t say that. Liang did.

And yes i have a lot of thoughts about that and it is a substantial danger to tesla

> I didn’t say that. Liang did.

Ah right. Interesting that this is the view of a Chinese technologist working in China.

And also that seems be aimed more at DeepSeek's LLM software and the tech business, than it is at electric vehicles. The second technology is IMHO far more beneficial.

There are no fundamentals justifying valuations of most multi-trillion dollar US companies, and yet here we are. Also, Tesla is currently the only US company that figured out how to make EVs profitably. And one of the very few in the world. All the remaining companies able to profitably make EVs are in China, which we for some reason must "contain" somehow.

Toyota could probably make a profitable EV by just taking their Prius and RAV4 PHEVs and omitting the ICE engine and using that space for more batteries, replacing the charger with one that can handle higher power, and tweaking the software.

Coulda woulda. Let me know when that actually happens. So far their EV strategy has been an utter and complete failure.

>Also, Tesla is currently the only US company that figured out how to make EVs profitably.

That's not really true these days and hence part of the grift. Early Tesla was only profitable because they were first to market and had huge subsidies to take advantadge of. It's no coincidence that Musk started moving right as Trump took his first office and was clearly antagonizing EV tax credits (as he does now).

Meanwhile, in the 2020's TSLA isn't profitable from cars. It's from BTC and some weird loophole I don't fully understand letting them amortize that value for multiple years.

Citation needed. In 2024 Tesla reported average margins of about 20%, excluding all that. I get it, you don't like Musk, but let's not get carried away here.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/29/tesla-reports-600-million-pr...

Nothing I said was really opinion here. How about you cite how they excluded the crypto and got 20% profit margins if you're going to simply ask for sources and call me biased? I don't exactly trust Hollywood accounting knowing the above story.

You're trying to weasel out of this, which I will not allow. I specifically said that they make profit in their car business _even excluding_ all the other things. They do carry forward prior losses, of course, of which they had a massive amount, and reduce their tax obligations to near zero with them, but they are profitably building EVs. Why? Because they are vertically integrated, and they also build their own batteries, like e.g. BYD.

In Norway it was down almost 40% compared to same month last year[1].

However monthly Tesla numbers has historically had a high month-to-month variance, and they had very good numbers at the end of last year[2].

So at least here I wouldn't say we're seeing a trend just yet.

[1]: https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/tesla-salget-stupte-i-norge-i-jan...

[2]: https://www.tek.no/nyheter/nyhet/i/4BV7LE/bilsalget-ny-tesla...

Somewhat anecdotal, but I follow the used Tesla Model 3 market fairly closely in western Canada and have seen the number of listings triple over the last month or so.

If I open the local Facebook Marketplace equivalent, it is now full of people making bumper stickers saying "I bought this before Elon went crazy".

Why was this flagged? It's relevant, and there's no big flame war in the discussions. Musk-bots working as expected?

Maybe Germans don't want to buy cars from the company whose CEO did not one but two Nazi salutes on national television.

As a Tesla owner myself, it makes me very uncomfortable to think my car is remotely associated with a hate group. I wouldn't buy one today nor do I recommend it to others.

His new "target" audience is mostly the prussian-rump-state that has been left behind in east germany, that yearns for a new "empire" similar to the russians. Funny though, the time of empires is the one where "hyper-trade" dependant germany was the most run-down it ever was. You do not jump other countries in a dark alley with 1 month of gasoline for tanks if things are going so well.

I really don’t understand the flagging rules. Is anyone able to explain why this post was flagged?

Its based on the discussion it generates. If it generates heated discussions with little thoughtfulness or curiosity, it gets flagged and removed. Its effectively the opposite of how Facebook / Reddit / similar clickbait platforms work, and one of the key reasons we don't get as much low quality garbage comments here.

cloverich described the theory. In practice, if enough people loosely band together to flag, they can mark an entire story as flagged. As of late, almost every topic related to Elon Musk became flagged, so I wouldn't be shocked if there's a more dedicated brigade for this (as well as a mix of the usual "I don't want politics in Hacker News" crowd).

Know way of testing this (that I know at least), but I'm curious about how much the effect is Musk's politics and how much is other EVs catching up.

Politically, I'm fairly left wing, concerned about democracy and climate change. Elon Musk's politics is easily enough to make sure I'd never purchase anything he's associated with.

That said, for buying an EV, tradional car manufacturers have mostly caught up with where Tesla is now, as a European buyer, I could get a high quality EV much cheaper from longer established brands with more effecient supply chains.

Seems pretty tricky to try and untangle those two effects.

Guess what the ascii code for 'X' is. One try.

Feels conspiracy theory level, but maybe a dog whistle. Hmm

I'm sure we can conclude Elon is a fascist based on his words and actions alone, without resorting to numerology.

I agree. But: I wonder how long ago his fascination with all things Nazi started and the whole 'X' thing goes back a long, long time. So this may not be a recent thing at all.

His maternal grandfather was an ardent supporter of nazi ideals, boosted the Protocols of Zion, and moved to the aparthied South African regime as they had "the right idea". His paternal grandfather was less so but leaned that way and was foreign minister in the SA Government defending aparthied.

Elon's maternal grandfather died when he was young but apparently his maternal grandmother had a great influence on him and was likely a fellow traveller living in a house that celebrated all things Nazi.

New model will be coming out. Most are waiting for it.

No they’re not. Tesla will need to fire Elon if they want to repair their reputation.

Sadly, TSLA is more or less a meme stock built up by Hype. No one wants to pull out and lose the hype.

Did he really expect the continent that was ravaged by WWII to be thrilled about his gesture and rally around to buy his Swasticars?

New car sales in Germany have generally declined significantly since last summer. The last thing Germans worry about is a new car.

Alas, the statistics say the opposite.

> New car sales in Germany have generally declined significantly since last summer. The last thing Germans worry about is a new car.

The 2023 to 2024 year-on-year decline was 1% [1]. Compared to that, a 60% drop for a single brand is catastrophic. (And wonderful in this case)

[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/germany/2024-full-year-ger...

From TFA:

"German road traffic agency KBA’s website on Wednesday showed the number of newly registered Tesla cars fell 59.5% to 1,277 in January, while the overall German market was down just 2.8% at slightly more than 207,000 vehicles during the month."

Didn't verify it personally, but if you claim something contrary to TFA, a source would be nice.

Sales of EVs have fallen much further than sales of all vehicles in general.

Electricity prices.

Here are charts from the mentioned KBA site which show the decline from 300.000 in 06/2024 down to 208.00 in 01/2025.

https://www.kba.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Fahrzeugzula...

Comparing different months doesn't mean as much due to seasonal trends. YoY numbers from 1/2024 is aroound 215k. sp a 2.8% YoY decline seems to make sense.

This perhaps?

https://fortune.com/2025/01/06/germanys-ev-sales-crash-elect...

The overall slump in electric car sales in Germany saw battery-powered vehicles lose market share relative to traditional combustion engines and hybrid cars. Electric cars made up 13.5 percent of sales in 2024, down from 18.4 percent in the previous year.6 Jan 2025

Not sure what Reuters's intent was but these news stories will make it go back up.

Suddenly anyone who supports Musk will buy one when they otherwise wouldn't.

The target market of Trumpist populism and Tesla's premium electric vehicles are in different tax brackets.

I have never "supported" anyone in that way in my whole (long) life. I just don't understand it. Is there some explanation for it?

I don't think it actually happens as much as these people like to say it does. It's just a convenient way to externally blame and berate those they don't like for things they were going to do anyway.

But to the extent that it does happen, it seems explicable with reference to the behaviour of children when told not to do something. Some evidently never grew out of it.

I'm not sure how effective it is, but I have heard of the concept of "rage spending". buying a product with the intent to enrage social or political opponents.

The idea makes sense, but these days people make it so blatant. So the merchant can make it feel more like a grift than simply trying to appeal to an audience.

I doubt there's any kind of intent there.

But, honestly, if that is the end result; Trump supporters buying more electric cars, Id call that a win.

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