Summary
Tesla’s European sales are plummeting, with Germany seeing a 60% drop despite strong EV growth. Similar declines hit Norway, Sweden, and France.
While some blame the Osborne effect—buyers delaying purchases for a refreshed Model Y—Musk’s endorsement of Germany’s far-right AfD may also be repelling customers.
Online backlash has linked Tesla to fascist imagery. In contrast, UK sales fell only 7.8%, suggesting political factors play a role.
With strong domestic EV competition in Europe, Tesla’s reputation crisis could further hurt demand.
Hopefully, the Tesla nose dive spreads to his other businesses.
I must say congratulations to Mr. Musk on finally finding that one special picture that will live on in the history books. You wanted to be remembered, and you are well on your way to having the name “Elon” be right up there with “Adolf” when people are choosing names for their children.
Elon Shitler has a nice ring to it. #PresidentElon please use this hashtag in all your sm post. We need to sew divide wherever we can and baby Trump really cares about shit like this. ✊🏻
I kind of think this was intentional, because the picture everyone used before this was the dorky one of him jumping at the Trump rally. I’m sure he prefers this one.
I wasn’t thinking of it that way, but you are probably right.
I was thinking he can’t have real immortality so he settled on being as memorable as possible. But in his twisted conservative mind, maybe this is him wanting to be remembered as a hardass rather than an [insert slur for gay men].
The thing is that the far right in Germany is nowhere near as popular as the Republicans in the US. And the intersection of Tesla buyers and far right voters is very small. Musk made a grave mistake in the marketing department here.
Comparable to endorsing Jill Stein in the US as company for small arms.
IIRC this fact also had to do with a German government subsidizing EVs that ended late last year, I could be wrong to. Any German that can help clear this up?
Iirc, the subsidy was ~7000€. When the subsidy ended, car prices dropped by roughly 5000€. Meaning, there was a gift for the manufacturers and nothing changed. Of course, you can’t brag about your 40k car anymore because it’s only 35k now. And other smaller effects like the ads are different now.
when i see someone drive tesla, i feel like i should show my disapproval somehow. But i dont know how to do that in such way the message is understood without making the other one defensive since that would just make the problem worse.
Teslas have a lot of cameras. I’m not sure what kind of power it would need but its likely you can damage the cameras with a laser
people who use teslas definitely deserve some vandalism, but i dont think that would tell them it makes them shitty people. It would more likely just push them even more towards some hateful ideology. They should be made look like rejects they are, not victims. Though maybe if someone was to flip the tesla logo, it looks just like someone on kkk hood, just upside down.
This definitely fits the bill of ‘make the problem worse’
Great!!😀
Not sure if it’s just the promotion of the far-right parties.
For me at the latest after his “Heil Hitler” salute I’d be completely ashamed driving that car.
Might be interesting to see the exact daily timeline of the sales, if it collapsed after the 20th january.
Swatzicar!!!
Fuck around and find out is his new M.O.
Oo I hope this starts a wave of catchy mockery towards everything he touches and everything like him, like:
Go fash, stonks crash.
Having lived in a couple of countries in Europe, including a decade in Britain, I would say the UK is one of the most Fascist countries in Europe (for example having a citizen surveillance system even more extreme than the US and Press censorship in the form of D-Noticies), though elites there are extremelly good at being subtle and posh about it so the will keep up appearences: you won’t see goose stepping on the streets but for example in peaceful demonstrations the police will charge the crowd and News will report that - by showing the footage in the inverse order - as people first charging the police who then responded to it and you won’t see an overt Secret Police but once in a while out pops a leak of a special group within the normal police infiltrated Ecologist groups with undercover police officers (which came out because some female Ecologists ended up pregnant) or how their surveillance organisation kept Greenparty leaders under surveillance.
Back during the Nazi times the British elites were even pro-Nazi (there’s a picture of Queen Elizabeth as a child being taught by her uncle - then King - to do a Nazi salute) and it was only the Nazi invasion of Belgium that changed their minds, so geopolitics rather than a dislike of the Nazi ideology of ethnic superiority (notice how over the years British elites kept supporting white colonialism and their violence, from Appartheid South Africa to Genocide Israel). More in general, the elites over there (which are overwhelmingly dynastic in nature, and I don’t mean just the Royal Family) are strong believers in their own inherent superiority over others as justification for their wealth, so the whole ubermenschen and untermenschen thinking applied along class lines rather than just races (but races too: Brits tend to believe themselves superior to just about all foreigners but Americans and for example some of the most celebrated heroes of Britain - such as Churchill - actually ordered the execution of Genocides in the British Empire possessions).
All this to say that to me, having lived over there for a decade, the British’s minimal response to Fascism compared to the rest of Europe isn’t surprising - they live in a Society than in many ways runs along similar molds, harbours similar ideations about the inherent worth of people and is (including the Press) controled by elites who mostly are the same families that supported Nazism before Hitler invaded Belgium.
Most of Europe was okayish with the Nazi to be fair. We would evn turn away Jewish refugees before the war. Let’s be clear that WW2 didn’t happen because of the Genocides but only because of the invasions of other countries. The UK is not special in that regard.
My impression from living there is that the UK never ditched the mindset that some people are born inherently superior to others, and that’s both for different parts of British society along the axis of class (and in many cases also the different nations of the UK, with the English often seeing themselves as superior) and towards foreigners (Brexit did not happen in a vacuum).
I have the theory that is because the UK never really had a Revolution started from below (the closest they had were the Barons rebeling against the King leading to the Magna Carta or the Catholic-vs-Protestant fighting which was mainly different factions of the elites re-approportioning power) or Occupation by a foreign power that crushed the existing elites and loosened their power over the entire system, hence the established elites never really changed and thus the power structures in Britain, who those structures serve and who controls them, has changed a lot less over the last couple of centuries than elsewhere in Europe.
They’re not as much Fascists in a traditional sense but more a continuation of a Monarchic semi-Autocratic system were the power of the King was weakenned centuries ago and divided amongst the rest of the Landowner Class and later the Trading Burgeoisie without really reaching the lower classes in full (the closest to it ever happenning was post-War Britain and that has been reverted in the last 4 decades).
Fascism in Europe one of the reactions to Republicanism, but the UK never had a Republican phase and so a lot of the ideas on power and the worth of people in Fascism which are really just re-hashed monarchic thinking on who are the proper rulers and justifying it are still present in the British system in their natural (though more sophisticated in means and appearence) form.
All this to say that, yeah, I agree with you, it’s just that I don’t think their love for the Nazi ideology back then was quite driven by the same reasons as many other countries in Europe (though remember how even in Germany the Nazis had some support from the Monarchics) and that whilst elsewhere in Europe the elites that held such thinking were dethroned, in Britain they held on to power to the present day.
Weirdly though while that is still very much an authotarian system, it will always be a hard break on any too unhinged ideas of populism. It simply is not in the interest of the Elite.
That isn’t meant to be an excuse, but it will mostly prevent the hateful or ignorant to grasp the majority of power and change the state beyond the point of no return. The point we fear might be passed soon in the USA, as well as Italy, Germany, Austria and all other countries where the far-right populists are on the rise, without being kept in check
I think Brexit disproves all that.
I’ve lived in Portugal, The Netherlands, Britain and Germany and the most unhinged ideas of populism I ever saw upclose which were the most widespread amongst the population, were in Britain during the Leave Referendum and afterwards - the same unhinged Racism of the Far Right all over Continental Europe which at the time had less than 20% overall support, in Britain yielded to the Leave faction of the Tory Party one referendum and two Parliamentary Elections and would’ve won them a 3rd one if the Populist Rightwing vote hadn’t been split due to the rise of the (even more unhinged) Reform UK party and a First Past The Post system that turned that split vote into lots of constituency losses (to the point that Labour got 64% of MPs on only 34% of votes cast).
Don’t confuse the quality of image management that results from the training most British Politicians got as children in very expensive and very posh private schools, with them not being populist - somebody like Boris Johnson was spreading the same kind of ideas as Trump, Orban or the Far-Right in the rest or Europe, he was just much smoother at it, mostly because whilst for example in the US the idea of “important person” is somebody who is loud, cares not about manners and sounds confident, in Britain it’s somebody who is posh, has soft upper class accent and sounds confident, so populist leaders in Britain, being well adapted to local prejudices, project a different image than the loud and brutish common abroad, whilst defending the very same ideas.
Musk’s clown car of leadership finally careens into reality. When your CEO’s political acumen involves cosplaying as a far-right edgelord, even Europe’s EV adopters—historically tolerant of overpriced gadgets—start side-eyeing the brand. Tesla’s not a car company anymore; it’s a vanity project for a man who thinks “free speech” means platforming Nazis.
Meanwhile, European automakers are quietly eating Tesla’s lunch with actual innovation, not just empty hype. Musk’s fanbase? A shrinking cult of tech bros and crypto gamblers. The rest of us? We’ve moved on to cars that don’t come with a side of embarrassing billionaire tantrums.
Democracy’s broken? Sure. But watching Musk torch his own empire? Chef’s kiss.
What’s the difference between someone cosplaying as a far-right edgelord and an actual far-right edgelord?
The difference? One is a poser draped in the aesthetics of reactionary outrage to court attention and controversy, while the other is fully marinated in the ideology, living and breathing it. The former plays dress-up for clout; the latter believes the costume is their skin.
But let’s not split hairs—both are toxic. Whether it’s cosplay or conviction, the result is the same: amplifying regressive garbage under the guise of “provocation.” One just happens to be better at monetizing it.
I have yet to find someone who is truly just “Posing” with this shit and not just using “its a joke, bro” to claim not following that ideology. If they didnt at first, they developed that ideology quickly.
when is international break a Tesla window day?
These are working class people you are talking about. Please keep the focus on millionaires and billionaires.
And make Tesla more money by selling replacement windows? Nah. If you need to let out your anger on random people’s cars, buy some “Fuck Elon” stickers and stick those on the back.
Destroying peoples property is not the answer. Declining sales figures is.
It’s everyday my pal
weird. i guess some people just arent interested in driving Swasticars
“Car” is too big a word, “Nazimobil” fits better
Deploreans.
Hakencruisers
This one is clever, I love it.
Nazivaggen
SSyberwagen
Mobil while spelt wrong for a synonym for car, is longer then the word car.
Mobil is german for Mobile, so it still fits imo (that’s a lazy excuse for my brain not red-flagging the word for being wrong as it is correct in a language I speak, therefore being legit)
Also, “too big a word” afaik means the symbolic, so that calling Teslas “cars” overvalues them. They are not cars, they are merely mobile. Nazimobiles.
Fashmobile
There’s no H in fascist.
There is when you abbreviate it to one syllable.
You couldn’t pay me to drive one
Dude every single time one of my uber/lyft drivers picks me up in a Tesla, I alwats have some kind of issue. The door handles fail to extend to let me get in (what problem was this design even solving?), when I’m inside the way to open the door is so counter-intuitive even after doing it a few times it still takes me way too long to get it open (dumbest design ever…it’s just a button?), the seatbelt buckle doesn’t click, etc… Cheap fuckin construction.
Just terrible, stupid, designs. Add in the fascist bullshit? Fucking forget it. This asshole is ruining a good chance to cut down on emissions by being the face of EVs
This asshole is ruining a good chance to cut down on emissions by being the face of EVs
maybe that was the plan
The door handles were supposed to be more aerodynamic, but other manufacturers have solved the issue more elegantly.
We’re the four handles really adding that much drag? I can’t imagine.
Not that much, but definitely measurable. A Tesla competitor did some tests and they got a 1% range increase.
Replacing side mirrors with cameras also has a similar impact, but costs like 3.000 euros as an option.
So your choice of wheels has a bigger impact, but it’s not totally pointless. And cheap to do.
Traditional door handles actually reduce smug flow by 60% - the Tesla door handles produce a much more smugrodynamic profile.
The door handles are just fucking dumb… and on the inside the door release is a… button? Why?
To give the car time to lower the window a few millimeters and avoid damaging the seal. Plus someone probably thought it would look cool or something. There’s a manual release in case the car loses power, or something breaks.
It’s not unique to Teslas either, a few other cars have done the same thing.
A button which requires the car’s power to be working.
Don’t worry, there is an emergency release! It takes a little while to get to, so I hope the burning Tesla you’re trapped inside doesn’t burn too quickly.
“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth” - 287-212 BC
“Just give me a damn lever” - 2025
