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The sale of Tesla’s electric vehicles has suddenly fallen to many of its key European markets due to consumer return against Elon Musk’s political activism and interference with regional policy.
The world’s largest manufacturer of EV -in January recorded only 1,277 new cars in Germany, according to the German Federal Motor Traffic Administration, a fall of 59 percent compared to the same month last year. The country hosts Tesla’s only production facility in Europe.
Sale electric vehicles He slowly slowed down in Germany and France last year after the withdrawal of state subsidies, but demand has recently begun to recover.
Tesla’s fall followed because the German EV market has increased more than 50 percent of the year in January, pushing its market share from 14 to 4 percent.
In France, Tesla The sale fell 63 percent in January, while Tesla’s car registrations in Norway fell 38 percent. In the UK, registrations decreased by 8 percent compared to the year earlier.
Automatic analyst Matthias Schmidt said that one factor behind Tesla’s sales fall in Germany could be that consumers are waiting for the upgraded model Y, scheduled for the first half of 2025. However, other experts also blamed that he was against Musk’s political involvement.
Musk made unprecedented intervention in German politics on the eve of federal elections on February 23, becoming the richest and most powerful A supporter of the extremely right alternative to Germany (AFD).
The party, which German business leaders, as well as the main political parties, see it toxic, is a victory in connection with the support of the owner X and the key assistant US President Donald Trump. The polls suggest that it is on the way to reaching a second place in voting this month with a record high of more than 20 percent of the vote.
Musk last month hosted Alice WeidelThe AFD leader, on his platform of social media for a 75-minute debate in which she falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler was a socialist.
While some party insiders questioned the wisdom of this line of discussion, they also expressed the hope that Musk would encourage their attraction among some segments of the electorate, especially the young man.
Musk pulled out sharp criticism of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his main rival, the leader of the Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, because of the support of the party who invited the mass deportations of migrants, plays with Nazi slogans and is partly classified as the right extremist by domestic intelligence agencies.
An entrepreneur from the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg told the German media that he had “completely overcome” the orders for the sticker he produced for Tesla owners who read: “I bought this before Elon went crazy.” He said he had received as many as 2,000 orders in one weekend.
Brussels officers also enhanced an investigation into the role of X from men’s intervention, ordering a platform to submit internal documents on her recommendation algorithm.
