JemmyTesla is done in Germany: 94% say they won’t buy a Tesla car
Jeena
electrek.co/2025/03/14/tesla-is-done-in-germany…
A survey of over 100,000 Germans revealed that 94% won’t buy a Tesla vehicle. It doesn’t bode well for the automaker, whose sales had already been falling off a cliff in the important European market.
In 2024, Tesla saw a 41% reduction in sales in Germany compared to 2023 despite EV sales surging 27% during the year.
This has already raised red flags about Tesla’s future in Germany, but it is nothing compared to Tesla’s performance so far in 2025.
Tesla’s sales were down 70% in the first two months of 2025, and again, that’s compared to its already poor performance in 2024.
44 Comments
Comments from other communities
“Nazi-related gestures”
makes nazi salute
"Hitler did nothing wrong"
"Oh, he's not a bad guy, he's misunderstood."
Deleted by author
A_norny_mousseBest 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?
467265654C75696769...and do it twice, just in case the first "accident" wasn't enough.
mercanoIf the Tesla board of directors was being responsible to shareholders, they’d have recognized the damage the public perception of Elon is doing to the company and either have him rein it in or outright remove him. However, Elon’s gotten a number of his cronies onto the board, so I don’t think it’s happening unless the shareholders vote out the current board.
It's also weird because if they get rid of Elon then people would start looking at the actual fundamentals of Tesla which would lead to a much much lower stock price. In December, Tesla was valued at roughly the same as the rest of the worlds auto manufacturers combined, despite selling only 3% of the worlds cars in 2023.
It's an aspirational brand that is the result of a carefully curated public image. Tesla are notable for their litigation propensity, dubious technical claims and avoidance of benchmarking, e.g., JD Power.
FuglyDuck
94% say they won't buy a Tesla car
CorkyskogThe rest are the AfD
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.
It is already dumb for a German to buy an American car. It is like a French buying an American wine.
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.
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.
Okay, Elon Musk is a giant asshole, but not so big that it warps reality around it. Musk provided money and became chairman of Tesla in Jan 2004. The first production vehicle rolled out in 2005. All Teslas were produced after Musk joined Tesla. And while it could be argued that he did a hostile takeover of Tesla, usually theft doesn't include piles of cash going to the victim.
Thanks. I don't get this need to lie about something to make a point.
He definitely made Tesla what it is today. Through that, he and the company single-handedly changed the automotive market forever, forcing other car brands to go EV.
The same is true for SpaceX - people who claim that he's just some rich-kid CEO who has no idea of engineering and processes have no clue. Just ask the father of the Kestrel, Merlin and Raptor engines, Tom Mueller.
But anyway, it's all moot now. Elon's gone rogue, and he may or may not bring the western world down with him. Dystopia is on the horizon.
JustEnoughDucksThat is the thing. From the business and management side, yes he made them what they are today. He got the government to give absolutely massive subsidies, changed the company culture to be a 24/7 work grind with great pay (if you ignore salary-per-hour which most people do until they get burnes out). That got a ton of shit done very fast, with enough budget to be able to just test and test and test and not need to burn as much money on trying to get it right the first few times while also having state of the art assembly capabilities. That is no small feat and most startup companies can only hope to achieve that runway and engineering power.
People then extrapolate it to "he is some tech genius who built these companies and products and he was the main engineer behind it" No, he absolutely is not, he is a steve-jobs-esque role with decent tech literacy. He is no genius, sociopath who is extremely good at manipulation and getting what he wants, yes. He is closer to an Edison than a Tesla. In the executive world, decent tech literacy and willingness to learn makes you seem like a supergenius compared to all of the other MBA CEOs.
If you ask engineers in his company, since he went crazy and stopped being willing to listen and learn from his engineers, he has been an active detriment, engineering-wise, to the companies. He is not a genius. Just ask Tom Mueller
Your link doesn't mention your statement anywhere.
But I also never said Musk is some kind of genius - don't put words in my mouth.
Instead, this is the position I maintain.
I mean, it technically may be true, but that's due to the complete lack of a viable competitor. Teslas are cheap, poorly made death traps. If you use auto pilot your basically being used as an unpaid crash test dummy. If you like being taken advantage of, then a Tesla is for you
As someone from Northern California might not have been the greatest analogy :)
Looks like some elitist crap to me.
Who the fuck buys the "best" especially in something like wine thats replete with elitist bullsit and nobbery to exagerate perceptions of scarcity and create an "investment". its a fucking consumable.
99% of the people in France can get perfectly good French wine for a handful of euros without importing from USA.
Coudn't give a fuck about the other 1%.
NaichThere's plenty of really good American wines.
But you can buy just as good and better wines cheaper and locally if you live in France.
yep, value for money.
Importing is a waste of diesel fuel even without any tariffs - if you have decent domestic production.
paintedsunflowersThe only way to get your money back is to set your car on fire these days
This is how we should treat all products and services coming from the US.
Promote the European market for a stronger Europe. We have failed here in recent decades. Let's buy EU products for a better future for our youngest.
jabjoeAlso services. Including Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Those American tech monopolies are now a problem for all to see.
That’s pretty wild considering the rise of AfD support there.
I wonder if Elon’s endorsement was a detriment to their election campaign.
I mean AfD made it pretty clear they are against Tesla when trying to stop the Tesla plant in Germany.
Not sure how their brains work, maybe they don’t. 🤷🏼♂️
Well, they are afraid of electric vehicles, they want the good old polluting combustion engine.
I wonder if Elon’s endorsement was a detriment to their election campaign.
No, definitely not. But imho it didn't shift the needle upwards either. They've been on the rise for a long time and there was no jump during this election.
But the next election in Europe might look different.
And there's a lot more to be said about American-based social media and far-right populist movements influencing our own flavors of the same for many years now.
The left don't buy Teslas because of Elons right political views and his salute.
The right don't buy Teslas because Teslas being electrical vehicles. Electrical vehicles are considered as left / woke in Germany.
pelespiritNeintyfour percent say no. Doesn't this mean like most of AfD voters also say nein?
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.
Because they have been fed massive propaganda against EVs for years, they would never buy one anyway.
Vierundneunzig, bitte.
Since they got much more than 6% during the last election, and 82% of all people voted, yes.
People should really stop talking about Tesla. Everyone knows what a Tesla is, even people who can't name any other car brand/model.
🫱🦋
Is this domestic terrorism? /s
No! This is systematic extortion! This is suppression of free speech! This is against the free market!
ilLeGaL BoyCOtT!!!
That happens when a brand is about one person. Musk made Tesla all about himSelf. In a way he was the product - you could buy his cool car. Be a part of the company with that cool weird funny CEO. He posts memes just like you!!! Loom at his funny flamethrower! How random! Hahaha!
He would also lie about so many features that nobody could actually believe it was a lie (full self driving next year(tm), battery range etc). So they still went ahead and bought it - and had a lot of sunken cost associated to his cool image.
But oh no! It turns out the guy is actually an asshole, a racist, likes nazis, is an delusional and unpredictable drug addict, not that smart, born with money from aparthheit-enabled-exploitation - who could've known!?!?
now people don't like him, so they stop buying his product.
Reminds me of subway. They somehow survived that whole PR nightmare, but still.... They're not nearly what they used to be.
Subway was down in quality before Jarod was discovered to be a pedophile.
Oh, I'm not saying anything about the quality of their product. I'm only discussing the popularity of their product. Enshittification comes for every company, and when subway started operating at a much larger scale than they used to, in part because of Jerrod, suddenly, saving 5 cents on something (and making it shittier) would actually result in millions of dollars extra on the earnings sheet.
Before, the 5 cents wasn't worth much because quantities were too low to matter, and the better quality item could be a reason that people kept coming back. But they started to expand and grow before Jerrod was brought on, he was just extra jetfuel for the whole thing.
They do have some other similarities with Tesla though, like rapid expansion, market saturation and short term profits over quality.
Tesla also has the crazy market over valuation that needs a correction (more valuable than Toyota? LMAO).
Done for now, Musk only owns 12.8% of Tesla - it's only a matter of time until the institutional shareholders kick him to the kerb.
Musk could have 0 shares in Tesla. The whole marketing of his companies revolved around him. Its even worse than Apple and Steve Jobs. People will think Tesla = Musk until Musk is dead.
Unless they do a huge PR stunt, maybe even a rebranding.
Their CEO may be considering TeSSla as a new brand.
If they actually call Elon out for being a nazi and shout from the rooftops about him owning 0 shares then I'll consider not laughing at swastikars in public
This. It's the only way I'd even -think- about the company with any degree of respect. Until the billionaire is stripped of his toys they're part of the problem.
No Tesla is finished at a minimum to a degree where they will end up as a niche car maker at best.
This would have happened even without Musk being unpopular, because the truth is Tesla doesn't make very good cars, and their development cycle sucks hard. 5 years to develop a new model, where others typically use 3, and China only 1-2 years. The competition is already overtaking Tesla. Musk just made sales drop faster.
Tesla has lost about 50% of their sales globally YoY as of February. That alone is a cause for near certain bankruptcy.
Other car makers like for instance Nissan are claimed to be in trouble for losing just 5% sales!!
It doesn’t help that Tesla are also screwing over the people who buy them. I have heard so many horror stories of what happens when something in your Tesla breaks. Most of it sounds like purchasing a Tesla doesn’t mean that Tesla thinks you actually own that car. Lookup “Tesla right to repair” for just a taste of the mess.
The controlling board for Tesla is all family and friends of Musk.
The Germans have had their fill of Nazi built vehicles.
Good.
Ehhh...
So, normally, you want a random sample in polls, which is very unlikely to not be representative of the population as a whole. If they have 100k people, it very probably isn't a random sample, because you only normally take something like 1k to 2k people for randomly-sampled polls; there's a rapidly-declining value above that. If the sample set is self-selected rather than randomly-selected, you can get results that are pretty different from the population as a whole.
fires up Google Translate
While I can't seem to get the survey page to load, the domain it's on is apparently t-online.de; it sounds like it's a reader survey, which won't be random.
With 100k size, and no evidence this was deliberately tilted, this is definitely huge.
Unfortunately your link doesn't show the poll that I can see. So I don't know the specifics.
But if it's among mobile users, there is no reason they should be particularly biased one way or the other.
If this is reasonably accurate, we can expect Tesla market share to decline further. AFAIK it was about 4% in January in Germany.
There are lots of reasons to not buy a Tesla, and now fear of vandalism may keep people away who don't really care about the politics. Which could explain the high number that state they won't buy a Tesla. Most of them are probably not even in the market for a car though. So it's not just a Tesla they won't buy.
Yeah. The important and encouraging part is that 70% drop of a 41% drop, while other electric cars are gaining.
Very important point, just one technical remark, because I see this a lot: You don't necessarily want or need random samples in surveys. What you want is a probability sample, which means that you know the probability with which a person enters the sample. A random sample is a special type of probability sample, where each person has the same probability to enter the sample.
The large sample used for this "survey" in the OP is a convenience sample, which is a non-probability sample, where the persons' probabilities to enter the sample are simply unknown. And this is often not a useful basis for a survey, because it's affected by all sorts of response biases that are difficult to adjust for in non-probability samples.
Also 94% of people say they wont buy a product says nothing as a metric, unless before substantially more said so.
Also if hypothetically Tesla sold their cars to 6% of Germanys adult population, that is like 4-5 million cars.
I'm in a different European country but there's been a very noticeable decrease in the number of Teslas I see in traffic on any given day.
A year ago they were everywhere and now I have to really pay attention to even spot one.
Do you toss eggs at them?
Do you want USians watch with envy?
Am USian. Toss the eggs.
And that's Germany that just elected a right wing government and almost elected a FAR right government. Imagine the rest of Europe. On top of that, china's evs are top tier in quality from what I hear. Would much rather do business with them since they aren't trying to annex me.
doesnt mean much, i guarantee you this number would have already been at 60+ before elon did any of his dumb stunts, solely because most people simply cant afford a tesla or are interested in other cars.
wont buy and wouldn't buy carry very different meanings.
it could mean, even the 20% nazis wouldn't buy one 😂
I was just checking used car prices in germany, and Tesla is well within the trend - maybe it just takes a bit longer to show on the statistics. I would be embarrassed to be seen in a Swasticar. Sadly I own a Tesla Powerwall, but it's easier to keep this secret :D
I love that for him.
Excellent
The remaining 6 % of Germans are still 5 million. This number does not means what you think it does.
Including babies, teenagers, disabled, elderly unable to drive and people banned from driving. This number does not mean what you think it does.
I am sure they all were part of this survey.
Think again. Slowly.
Ah, but still same conclusion.
Then think again if your 5 million is 5 million 🙄
6 % of 80-something million is 5 million. The poll did not ask babies, they are already excluded there. The subset of the total population will then be smaller too, but really not much changes: A whole fucking lot would still but it. Millions. That is the big problem.