Tesla sales plunge 59% in Germany, its worst showing in years

TESLA’S sales plummeted 59 per cent last month in Germany, where chief executive officer Elon Musk asserted himself in national politics like never before.

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 electric vehicle market that was up 54 per cent for the month, suggesting Musk’s vocal support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party likely dragged on demand.

Tesla also posted declines in the UK and France last month, meaning sales fell in Europe’s three largest EV markets as its CEO vouched for AfD leader Alice Weidel and took on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government. All the while, Musk was cementing his position in the administration of US President Donald Trump, who’s threatened to hit the European Union with tariffs.

Musk, 53, hosted a live discussion with Weidel on his social media site X ahead of Germany’s federal election this month. During a virtual appearance at a party 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.

Tesla’s sales plunged 63 per cent last month in France, the EU’s second-biggest EV market, and dropped 12 per cent in the UK. BLOOMBERG