Tesla is in a bad way right now, as evidenced by outrageous financing deals, Cybertrucks piling up on dealer lots and constant price decreases. The issues extend far beyond the U.S., though. Certain places in Europe — especially Germany, it would seem — are none too pleased with CEO Elon Musk’s hard push to the extreme right of politics.
A new survey from German publication T-Online polled about 100,000 of its readers and found that 94 percent of the respondents said they’d never buy a Tesla. Just three percent said they would even still consider a car from Musk’s company. This is disastrous news for Tesla.
Of course, competition from other electric vehicles is putting a bit of the squeeze on Tesla, but that doesn’t account for all of it — not at all. T-Online asserts that Musk himself is playing a huge role in all of this, and I agree. They say, “His political escapades, his closeness to Trump, his forays into the world of conspiracy theories – they’re scaring away buyers and investors.” It’s not just Musk’s bad politics, either. It’s also his financial decisions. He has lowered prices to boost sales, and in turn, used Teslas are losing value quite rapidly, according to T-Online. It’s the same story here in the U.S., too.
Tesla’s long slide down
This sort of reaction has been a long time coming in Germany. In January, we reported that sales dropped 59 percent in the country as Musk put all his rights behind Germany’s far-right AfD party. That trend was actually worse the following month when sales dropped 76 percent year over year. Tesla sold just 1,429 cars in Germany during the short month. You might think it’s because of a downturn in the overall German EV market, but that’s simply not the case. Sales were up 31 percent over the previous year. It’s a Tesla problem.
It’ll be very interesting to see where Tesla’s German sales fall to once March is all wrapped up. I’m not a betting man, but the smart money is on “low.” I’m also quite excited to get Tesla’s first-quarter results. The Austin, Texas-based automaker doesn’t break down its sales by month like most other car companies, so we’re going to have to wait for the middle or end of April to really find out what’s going on with Tesla right now.
