It seems clear by now that the Tesla brand has completely fallen out of favor with the progressive, high-earning, status-conscious demographic in Germany (their main buyer group). While there are tentative trends toward avoiding US products in general, I see little potential for this becoming widespread. Few people are actually boycotting Apple or Coca-Cola, and most continue to make a clear distinction between the American people and culture (which they consider close friends) versus the current US administration.
I wonder how this compares to markets like Canada or Denmark? Are other brands facing similar challenges in those countries as well?
Maybe not exactly the same thing, but obviously the arms industry is going to face some challenges because of the new American foreign policies.
Maybe they will be offset by general increase in arms production, but Europe has alternatives to most of the weapons they currently buy from USA (including strategic air defense). They just need to scale up production.
With more and more alternatives available, not sure why someone would in general buy a Tesla, at least here in Europe.
They are very expensive and apparently not high quality as one would be expecting for that price. Add all the political "things" happening in the last months and that VW, BMW etc are waking up and you'll get a high number of people not wanting to buy a Tesla anymore. Probably not 94% but I think it's pretty close.
My wife had to buy a car last year, wanted to buy electric and Tesla was the only one that was ready to deliver within a month and at a decent price per features.
Don't care about Elon but in the end all these corporations building the cars are on the same level of general disregard for the population or environment and just chasing profits. Doubt there is a real ethical choice when buying a car nowadays
Teslas have been very popular in the Netherlands, and by far the best selling cars (Model 3 as of 2019 [0], Model Y in 2023 [1] and 2024 [2]), but sales have been declining for a while now. Though I'm not under the impressions that this has anything to do with Musk's recent actions, in my observation it's just that other car options have become available.
Tesla became very popular because EVs were heavily subsidised and Tesla was the only good EV option for quite a few years. Other manufacturers either didn't have EVs, or they were very impractical, awkward and ugly.
European manufacturers eventually woke up and started introducing EVs, and although they are a common sight on the street now (BMW, VW and Porsche in particular) they are still rather expensive, so Tesla remained popular for a while.
But in recent year Korean (Kia, Hyundai) and Chinese (BYD, NIO, etc.) manufactured cars have matured a lot. Their designs have improved considerable to a point where my friends, who consider themselves hardcore car guys, actually like them. Now a new Kia or BYD (heck, even Hongqi) is becoming well accepted and seem on-par in social status as a Tesla.
So this is purely anecdotal, but in my social circles at least nobody seems to consider Musk's actions in choosing a new car, it's just that other options have become available.
94% comes from a non-representative online poll, but Tesla sales already about halved in 2024 and the first months of 2025 saw another halving to 70+% reduction YoY. So it's certainly quite bad.
But I also wonder, with germany being a very SUV-centric market, if this has something to do with the tesla SUVs (X and Y) just being uniquely butt-ugly. If you have working eyes, there are just so many options which look much nicer these days, and unlike ten years ago there is no big performance gap.
It has to do with other companies catching up and surpassing Tesla. Tesla's are a bad deal nowadays because of build quality and the company slashing prices(which kills resale value). Has tesla refreshed their lineup yet?
Plus the whole CEO is a psycho nazi thing.
edit: yeah, there's an article over on the verge talking aout how used tesla prices are plummeting because everyone wants to ditch their teslas. It's probably a decent time to buy a cheap tesla.
"...a couple of Seig Heil..." -- that's not even a thing.
It's "Sieg Heil". I've yet to read German articles doing so many errors when using or quoting foreign languages.
Doesn't change the general quality of any article, but it bothers me, that English speaking journalists seem so outright ignorant when it comes basic proof reading -- names, locations, basic phrased,... often ridiculously botched.
That's good zum Abkühlen from all the trolling with which they piesack all our indoctrinated sensivities, or maybe one should say DOS(denial of service), because that shit is not only forbidden by law, but mandated to be BESTRAFT with utmost prejudice!
There is always the answer "some users" found it too political, or not technical related and down voted. Maybe because YCombinator has a certain user base that skews towards being pro Tesla. I don't know how many bots are running here.
Either way, negative Tesla articles are usually "flagged" within a few hours.
Readit News
Maybe they will be offset by general increase in arms production, but Europe has alternatives to most of the weapons they currently buy from USA (including strategic air defense). They just need to scale up production.
https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal-rules-out-buying-f-...
Dead Comment
They are very expensive and apparently not high quality as one would be expecting for that price. Add all the political "things" happening in the last months and that VW, BMW etc are waking up and you'll get a high number of people not wanting to buy a Tesla anymore. Probably not 94% but I think it's pretty close.
My wife had to buy a car last year, wanted to buy electric and Tesla was the only one that was ready to deliver within a month and at a decent price per features.
Don't care about Elon but in the end all these corporations building the cars are on the same level of general disregard for the population or environment and just chasing profits. Doubt there is a real ethical choice when buying a car nowadays
https://www.carwow.de/ratgeber/elektroauto/lieferzeiten-elek...
If you can't wait 2-6 months, I agree Tesla is not a bad option.
Tesla became very popular because EVs were heavily subsidised and Tesla was the only good EV option for quite a few years. Other manufacturers either didn't have EVs, or they were very impractical, awkward and ugly.
European manufacturers eventually woke up and started introducing EVs, and although they are a common sight on the street now (BMW, VW and Porsche in particular) they are still rather expensive, so Tesla remained popular for a while.
But in recent year Korean (Kia, Hyundai) and Chinese (BYD, NIO, etc.) manufactured cars have matured a lot. Their designs have improved considerable to a point where my friends, who consider themselves hardcore car guys, actually like them. Now a new Kia or BYD (heck, even Hongqi) is becoming well accepted and seem on-par in social status as a Tesla.
So this is purely anecdotal, but in my social circles at least nobody seems to consider Musk's actions in choosing a new car, it's just that other options have become available.
[0] https://www.autoweek.nl/verkoopcijfers/2019/ [1] https://www.autoweek.nl/verkoopcijfers/2023/ [2] https://www.autoweek.nl/verkoopcijfers/2024/
But I also wonder, with germany being a very SUV-centric market, if this has something to do with the tesla SUVs (X and Y) just being uniquely butt-ugly. If you have working eyes, there are just so many options which look much nicer these days, and unlike ten years ago there is no big performance gap.
Plus the whole CEO is a psycho nazi thing.
edit: yeah, there's an article over on the verge talking aout how used tesla prices are plummeting because everyone wants to ditch their teslas. It's probably a decent time to buy a cheap tesla.
It's "Sieg Heil". I've yet to read German articles doing so many errors when using or quoting foreign languages.
Doesn't change the general quality of any article, but it bothers me, that English speaking journalists seem so outright ignorant when it comes basic proof reading -- names, locations, basic phrased,... often ridiculously botched.
That's good zum Abkühlen from all the trolling with which they piesack all our indoctrinated sensivities, or maybe one should say DOS(denial of service), because that shit is not only forbidden by law, but mandated to be BESTRAFT with utmost prejudice!
Either way, negative Tesla articles are usually "flagged" within a few hours.