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.
If I ever see a fucking Cybertruck here, I’m moving to Antarctica.
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.
I bet someday we (the younger side of Lemmy) will be helping our kids with history homework and get jumpscared by this pic.
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].
Hopefully, the Tesla nose dive spreads to his other businesses.
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.
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
This definitely fits the bill of ‘make the problem worse’
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.
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.
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.
Swatzicar!!!
Oo I hope this starts a wave of catchy mockery towards everything he touches and everything like him, like:
Go fash, stonks crash.
Fuck around and find out is his new M.O.
weird. i guess some people just arent interested in driving Swasticars
“Car” is too big a word, “Nazimobil” fits better
Deploreans.
Hakencruisers
Nazivaggen
SSyberwagen
This one is clever, I love it.
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.
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.
Great!!😀
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?
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
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.
It is fascinating how little this correlates to the Tesla stock price. It has dropped a bit, down 8.4% in the last month, but it still up 80.8% over the last 6 months. I´m curious what kind of business model the shareholders is expecting from Tesla that does not involve selling cars.
I imagine that the federal government will be buying Teslas by the shipload
The army will be replacing humvees with cybertrucks.
Tesla will announce a CyberTank to replace the M1
i’m only sort of joking
Judging on the fact that it jumped up after election day, investors are expecting corporate nepotism to boost profits.
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent…or sth like that.
“In the short term, the market is a voting machine, but in the long term, it is a weighing machine” - Benjamin Graham (“father” of value investing and mentor to Warren Buffett)
Meaning that in the short term, stock prices can be swayed from a company’s true value by investors’ emotions and opinions.
But eventually the stock price will align with the company’s actual profitability and growth potential.
And you’re right that these are crazy times, and the “short term” irrationality can last a lot longer than past experiences.
Historically, we’ve used examples like the 17th century tulip mania, or the dot com boom, but it won’t surprise me if Tesla becomes the poster child for this quote in the future.
The share price isn’t based on car sales. If it were just about car sales, it would be about 10% of the price it is now.
The share price is mostly ridiculous, but it is also people trying to get in early, on the assumption that they solve FSD, battery storage, Optimus (their robot), and battery manufacturing.
If they solve all of this, then Tesla could 10x again. It’s very future dependent, and I think that future is a lot longer away than a lot of other shareholders think.
I got in at ~$20 per share. I’ve significantly reduced my position over the last few months, but I do still believe in the original mission of Tesla. I just don’t think they’re going to get there with Elon.
IMHO only FSD is something they could potentially achieve, but it took them so long the competition is catching up. At least in Europe (where Teslas have barely functioning traffic sign recognition) other manufacturers have level 3 ADAS in production. Like legally certified and everything.
Their batteries ( both mobile and grid storage) are nothing special, the 4680 is MiA, catl and BYD have bigger market shares already, I don’t know about Panasonic and other manufacturers, could be too.
And the robot is vaporware unless proven otherwise.
I’m not a gambler so I won’t short it (Elon can give himself trillions in government assistance now), but sure as hell wouldn’t hold it anymore.
Their batteries may not be special, but if they can scale to what they were promising a few years ago (which is a much bigger “if” than it used to be), their battery business could easily surpass BYD’s, which could justify its current market cap on its own (but not much higher).
I’ve got mixed feelings on FSD. I think it’s nearly “solved” for places with nice climate, but I think there’s a lot of work needed to deal with inclement weather like snow and slush and even heavy rain. I don’t think any company has any idea how to solve that issue, so they’re just pushing it down the road until someone else solves it first.
How would they scale it? I don’t think they have the factories even if they figure out the process. Last time I looked they had 2 (or 3?) locations.
Their factories in Nevada, Texas, and China all have a lot of extra space and/or land for expansion. They’ve also been considering building more factories in Mexico, another one in Europe, and possibly SE Asia, though it’s unclear whether any of those are going to materialize - especially with the current downturn in sales.
But that’s only 3 factories that they do have, building new ones would take years, they have lost the first mover advantage if they ever have one.
My understanding ia that they get carbon credits for producing EVs which they then sell to carbon producers to offset. They also produce batteries.
That being said, its not going to take a deep dive unless they have consecutive missed eps targets. Even then though, part of Elons MO is to promose some visonary tech that takes year to peoduce so just sitbtight man becauae im telling you its coming…
This time around its robots for the home. Laughable not because we dont have the technology, but who has the disposable income to afford it? Even if they come out, and it turns out people buy them (which also means not heing turned off by musk); where is the moat? What stops a competitor like boston dynamics, samsung, etc from seeing it as validation of a market and then entering it?
Even if Musk wasn’t a Nazi, he’s still a big enough douchebag that I wouldn’t want to buy a car associated with him. And even if he wasn’t a douchebag, the Cybertruck has demonstrated what kind of stupid shit Tesla does when they take orders from him. And even without Musk’s influence, I still wouldn’t buy a Tesla because there are so many other options on the market, and people have gotten very vocal about things like the build quality of Tesla cars.
That’s gotta start hurting their stock price at some point.
In my opinion this shows how fucking unrelated the whole financial sector is to reality.
It should be shut down or unrelated to the real world.
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