Peter Lyon
February 9, 2025
Tesla sales are tanking across Europe thanks in part (or a lot!) to CEO Elon Musk, whose global political interference is allegedly causing motorists to turn away from the electric vehicle brand.
The truth is in the numbers and those figures appeared in multiple publications including carscoops. In contrast to total car sales falling 6% in France in January compared to figures from last year, sales of Tesla cars in France have plunged 63%, 75% in Spain, 59% in Germany, 44% in Sweden, 38% in Norway and 42% in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Tesla’s sales have dropped by 11.6% in California, where the brand has a 35% market share according to data released by the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA).
Tesla’s drop in sales saw the company’s market share in California drop from 60 percent to 52 percent. It is the fifth consecutive quarter of decline for Tesla in the Golden State.
New polling in the U.S. from the Economist and Yougov, looks at how Americans feel about Musk, and specifically his involvement in the U.S. government’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after spending so much money to get Trump elected to the presidency.
Both publications conducted two polls, one just after the election in early November, which showed that among Republican voters that wanted Musk to have a lot of influence in government and efficiency tweaking, some 47% supported the idea. But when a new poll was taken last week, that number had plummeted by 21% to just 26%.
Meanwhile among Democrats and Independents, that number hovers around 6%.
Tesla’s global sales decline has been attributed by many industry observers to Elon Musk’s increasing political influence and involvement in the US, UK, and Germany.
With the German election in a few weeks, the brand’s founder and CEO has openly endorsed Trump, Reform UK, and Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), which has been particularly controversial.
In addition to owning SpaceX, Neuralink, and the social media platform X, the South African-born businessman has further sparked controversy with his activities, most notably when he appeared to do a Nazi salute following Trump’s inauguration. He said it was a “Roman salute” and denied these allegations but these comments did nothing to dispel the growing swell of anti-Musk.
Some people are even suggesting that drivers boycott Tesla over Musk’s actions, including Polish minister Sławomir Nitras who said Musk’s uttering about Nazi atrocities required a “strong response”.
Nitras pushed that “no normal Pole should buy a Tesla anymore” after Musk turned up at an AfD campaign event with leader Alice Weidel when Musk said Germany “focuses too much on past guilt”.
Just last month, Musk replied to a post on X, purporting that Tesla had the potential to become the biggest company globally “by a large margin”.
A report showed how the top seven companies listed with Tesla in seventh place boasting a valuation of $1.3trillion (£1.04trillion), behind the likes of Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia.
CARLIST THOUGHTS
Musk used to be Tesla’s best promotional tool. Now he’s its worst as seen in the firm’s plummeting global sales and spiraling popularity. More and more drivers are complaining that Musk is not focused enough on Tesla, more willing to focus his political affiliations and his new role as the s0-called DOGE leader.
