A boycott of Tesla vehicles is gaining momentum in Germany due to Elon Musk’s consistent meddling in the country’s politics and promotion of a fringe far-right party.
Many analysts and Tesla followers have been alleging that Elon Musk’s social media antics promoting misinformation and meddling in politics are affecting Tesla’s sales, which were down for the first time in a decade last year.
But it is extremely difficult to directly link the two.
However, there are a few direct examples of Tesla’s CEO being directly responsible for Tesla missing out on sales.
Last year, we reported that Rossmann, a German company that operates one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe, was electrifying its entire corporate car fleet and using Tesla vehicles to do so, but it announced that it would sell all its Tesla vehicles and replace them by other EVs.
The company specifically mentioned “incompatibility between the statements of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the values that Tesla represents with its products” as a reason for the move.
More recently, Musk has ramped up his comments on German politics, and he has been promoting AfD, a far-right political party that has been labeled as an “extremist organization” in which many members have been promoting neo-nazi ideology.
Musk urged Germans to vote for AfD in the upcoming elections.
This, and his constant promoting of misinformation on X, which X’s unknown “truth-seeking AI” Grok confirmed, have led to a boycott of Musk’s X platform in Germany launched by “more than 60 German and Austrian academic organizations.“
The X boycott is now spreading to Tesla.
After Rossmann, LichtBlick, a large energy company in Germany, is joining the Tesla boycott. The company announced on LinkedIn this week:
We are pulling the plug on Tesla vehicles in our fleet. This decision was made by our management together with the Facilities and Real Estate team..
Kevin Lütje, LichtBlick’s Head of Facilities and Real Estate, commented on the move:
“Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump and his recommendation to vote for a right-wing populist and right-wing extremist party that is in no way compatible with LichtBlick’s values prompted us to take this step. We are committed to diversity, tolerance and democracy. And of course climate protection and electromobility are extremely important to us. But in the future we will be relying on providers other than Tesla. All current contracts with Tesla vehicles will not be renewed after the contract ends.”
The company said it is “aware that this will not have far-reaching economic consequences for Tesla”, but it wants to set an example.
While it might not have a big impact, Tesla’s sales are already crashing in Germany. Sales are down 41% or about 26,000 units in 2024 versus 2023.
A lot of that decrease can be attributed to reduced EV incentives, but other electric vehicles have faired a lot better than Tesla.
Also, Musk has been focusing on German politics more recently, and therefore, his impact on the market is likely to be felt more in 2025.
Electrek’s Take
“Incompatibility between the statements of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the values that Tesla represents with its products” is also why I sold my Tesla stocks.
He is steering Tesla away from its noble original mission.
It’s hard to gauge his actual impact on Tesla’s sales, but these are direct examples. If this boycott starts to gain more momentum, maybe (big maybe) Tesla shareholders will start to respond and react appropriately by voting out Tesla’s board, which has been backing Musk at every corner.