Summary

A survey of 100,000 Germans found that 94% refuse to buy a Tesla, signaling a major crisis for the company.

Tesla’s German sales dropped 70% in early 2025 after a 41% decline in 2024, despite overall EV sales rising.

Analysts attribute the slump to CEO Elon Musk’s far-right political endorsements, including promoting the AfD party and making Nazi-related gestures. Musk is under European investigation for political meddling.

With Tesla’s reputation plummeting, industry experts predict further losses in Germany’s competitive EV market.

      • SleafordMod@feddit.uk
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        15 hours ago

        AfD got 21% in the election though, higher than just 6%. I think it’s like someone else in this thread said - the right don’t want to buy Teslas because electric cars are seen as “woke”, while the left don’t want to buy Teslas because they don’t like Musk.

  • Underwire@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It is already dumb for a German to buy an American car. It is like a French buying an American wine.

    • doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      Sadly our car industry slept way too long on electric vehicles and instead doubled down on combustion engines, even by fraudulent practices (e.g. Dieselgate).

      Teslas were by far the best EVs for a long time. Nowadays, not so much.

      • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        Teslas were by far the best EVs for a long time

        Were they though? Almost immediately after he stole the company from its founders/creators quality went down. But maybe there was enough residual quality to last him for a few years.

        Anyhow, your point stands. Nowadays there’s plenty more to choose from and what then was innovative just isn’t anymore.

    • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      makes nazi salute

      “Hitler did nothing wrong”

      “Oh, he’s not a bad guy, he’s misunderstood.”

      • samteria@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        “He has aspergers”

        I swear, this time-line seems right out of a South Park episode.

      • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        Best justification so far: he was just so happy, so in the moment!

        🤔 When’s the last time you made an “accidental” Heil Hitler just because you were pumped about something?

  • SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    That’s pretty wild considering the rise of AfD support there.

    I wonder if Elon’s endorsement was a detriment to their election campaign.

    • fluffy@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      Well, they are afraid of electric vehicles, they want the good old polluting combustion engine.

  • Denixen@feddit.nu
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    2 days ago

    Neintyfour percent say no. Doesn’t this mean like most of AfD voters also say nein?

    • joostjakob@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      As I said in the other place this article was posted: the source seems to be an online reader survey from t-online.be. That means the scientific value of this is pretty low. For decent surveys, you need a random sample. In this case, you need to be a visitor of t-online, and you decide for yourself that you want to participate. That’s already enough to skew results. Add to that that there’s a lot of online activism against Tesla (for obvious reasons), so the poll could have been partly hijacked. Such a low number of people who don’t care or haven’t heard about Tesla going rogue is not realistic anyway. There’s a lot of people who are weird, contrarian or simply avoid all news.