Tesla Sales Plunge 59% in Germany to Lowest Level in Years #NewsGerman

(Bloomberg) — Tesla Inc.’s sales plummeted 59% last month in Germany, adding to indications that Chief Executive Officer’s Elon Musk political activities are hurting the carmaker’s business in major electric vehicle markets.

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The US manufacturer registered only 1,277 new cars in January, its lowest monthly total since July 2021, according to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority.

Tesla lost substantial ground in an EV market that was up 54% for the month. Musk’s intervention in Germany’s upcoming federal election likely factored in the result — a poll taken in mid-January found the CEO was viewed unfavorably, and that his political interventions were unwelcome.

Tesla also posted declines in France and the UK last month, meaning its sales fell in Europe’s three largest EV markets. In addition to vouching for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party and taking on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Musk spent the month cementing his position in the administration of US President Donald Trump, who’s threatened to hit the European Union with tariffs.

The company’s sales plunged 63% last month in France — the EU’s second-biggest EV market, after Germany — and dropped 12% in the UK. Tesla shares traded down as much as 3.1% as of 12:15 p.m. Wednesday in New York.

AfD Support

Musk, 53, hosted a live discussion with AfD leader Alice Weidel on his social media site X on Jan. 9, giving a platform to the co-chair of a party that’s opposed Tesla’s construction of a plant outside Berlin and taken a dim view on renewable energy.

During a virtual appearance at an AfD rally later in January, the Tesla CEO urged Germans to be proud of their culture and, in an apparent reference to wartime atrocities under the Nazis, discouraged “too much focus on past guilt.”

The remarks — made just before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp — sparked outrage in a country where reckoning with the past is central to its postwar identity.

Other factors outside of politics are likely at play in Tesla’s slow start to the year. The company is changing over assembly plants to produce a redesigned Model Y, its best-selling vehicle, which will cost the manufacturer several weeks of lost production.

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