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Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#131

Post by youngtaff »

leesec wrote: post #117
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Model Y was best selling car in the world for 2 years running Teslas were cool for two years running. Look, the MAGA market is a big one. But it’s silly to think something as personal as a car won’t be affected by Musk’s politics. (We aren’t even in the phase where Tesla gets hit with targeted counter-tariffs.)

There's no real reason to think the "MAGA market" won't make up for the lost sales of the leftist market, or that it's particularly big swing either way ( most people don't care about politics and just want the best product )

Can you go rollin’ coal in a Tesla?

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#132

Post by tonyedgecombe »

dagmx wrote: post #60
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

This may get flagged as it's similar to previous articles that were flagged, but I'd just like to point out that ideological arguments pro or con about Tesla stories rarely seem to be the true reason. That is, whenever there is an article about Tesla sales slipping you see lots of "That's because all the liberal EV buyers hate Elon now!" comments. And as much as I may personally want that to be true, if you dig a tee…

I think you’re correct. Ideology rarely affects brand penetration this much. Whenever I talk to people in Europe , they always talk about the other options. Tesla is just not competitive there as a brand. I do hope that one outcome of this stupid tariff war here is that Canada drops the tariffs on Chinese EVs. They exist to protect US brands but we’re losing out on so many great options.

>Ideology rarely affects brand penetration this much.

CEO's rarely open their mouths this much.

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#134

Post by amluto »

olyjohn wrote: post #114
amluto wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting service for a Tesla in the US can be pretty unpleasant. They’ve gone from truly excellent service to not wanting to interact with their owners and managing parts availability quite poorly.

Don't worry, everybody else is following suit and not selling parts for new cars either. My friend just bought a new GM vehicle, and it sat in the bodyshop for 9 months after someone hit the bumper at 5mph. There's also the recent story about a guy running a limo business who couldn't get a bumper for his Cadillac, and had to keep making commercial insurance payments, and of course the car payment, while the car sat…

With a legacy car maker, the service centers are independent (sort of). They have phone numbers, they answer the phone, and they want your business. If your car is drivable but needs a part, you can ask them to order it, and they will do so. Tesla service centers do not answer the phone, do not answer email, and generally could not care less about you unless you have an appointment made on the app. And they do not reliably answer messages sent via app. And, while their people might notice that they don’t have a part a day or two before your appointment and tell you this (by in-app message) and advise you not to bother bringing your car in, the automated workflow part of their app does not understand this, and there is a chance that you will get stuck and your car will never get fixed.

You can bypass this process to some extent by walking into the service center without an appointment, hopefully getting a friendly person, and having them ask you to make a service appointment while you stand there (using the app on your phone) so they can then log in, find your service appointment, and attempt to get the system to let them order parts while you stand there (a process that may or may not require a tiny amount of actual technician time because, while Tesla has all kinds of telemetry, this telemetry does not integrate at all with the system by which service centers decide what parts are needed).

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#135

Post by iteratethis »

The thing with cars is that this is one of few things where Europe can do a MEGA. We can buy our own and the reasons to do so seem to grow by the day.

I honestly have found it always very lame to virtue signal by means of buying a car or to cancel by not buying one. Common people generally don't think that way. Real life is not Twitter. At least not where I live.

But that's changing. 3 years ago Musk was just edgy and annoying but everybody still wanted a Tesla. Now when I talk to people in the market for a car they openly dismiss the "Nazi car".

Lucky for Musk that his stock is a fan stock, not a business stock.

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#136

Post by that_guy_iain »

lenerdenator wrote: post #108
that_guy_iain wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a matter so serious to Germans that most Germans won't overlook it.

It's interesting that you say that, because the former GDR is where AfD is having the most success. Y'know, the part of the country that was run as a puppet of the Soviet Union and was more stridently "anti-fascist" for the majority of the postwar period? [0] As recently as 2023 they were the second-strongest party in Germany according to the polls. [1] Most Germans today only know of the horrors of Nazism from the h…

> It's interesting that you say that, because the former GDR is where AfD is having the most success. Y'know, the part of the country that was run as a puppet of the Soviet Union and was more stridently "anti-fascist" for the majority of the postwar period? [0]

It's running strong in the racist part of the country. The area of Germany where they were literally tying up people at the side of the road and the police did nothing. Or where a bunch of racists stood and chanted racist chants at a bus and the police made the people on the bus get off. That's the area where they have the racist marches. Aka the poor part of Germany. Where there are poor people there are people blaming someone for them being poor.

But not in all of the former GDR.

> Most Germans today only know of the horrors of Nazism from the history books. They have no real experience with it. There is nothing special about any particular nationality that makes them immune to the scourge of reanimated fascism. The Soviet Union bore horrible losses to the Nazis in WWII and the largest former SSR, Russia, is more-or-less a fascist state today. A salute isn't as alienating as "being left behind" by the world.

You seem to think I'm saying they're immune. I'm saying that a large majority of the country is very anti the far-right. So much so that the CDU had to walk back a vote where they voted with the AfD, this was a vote for a permanent border control. It passed the first vote, the second vote it did not after Germany had massive protests over the fact the CDU broke the unwritten rule that mainstream parties don't cooperate with the far-right parties.

> A salute isn't as alienating as "being left behind" by the world.

I think you think this is profound but it's just showing a lack of overall insight. Being left behind is basically what facists want.

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#137

Post by pragmatic »

tim333 wrote: post #124

Vaguely related, Paul Graham tweeted "I worry Elon has no idea how much he has damaged his personal brand ...", re UK stuff and Elon posted a pages of text rant as a result. Not sure if it was written by him or Grok. I worry Elon's going a bit bonkers with drugs or whatever. Conversation here: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1879785727468163505

Muskrat is losing it. Full on manic persecution complex.

Again not Tony Stark but Justin Hammer.

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#138

Post by PromKwing »

tim333 wrote: post #128
alephnerd wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, I've always wondered whether a lot of this is because of his Apartheid-era South African upbringing. Unlike a lot of White South Africans he's English, and they were viewed as outsiders by a number of Afrikaners. Same with with David Sacks being Jewish South African and Peter Thiel being the kid of German expats in ZA. On the other hand, Roelof Botha tends to remain outside the political limelight despi…

I know Must talks about being bullied at school. I'm sure that contributes.

Contributes to what? Tesla's failing sales?

Re: Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany

#139

Post by stevenAthompson »

tim333 wrote: post #124

Vaguely related, Paul Graham tweeted "I worry Elon has no idea how much he has damaged his personal brand ...", re UK stuff and Elon posted a pages of text rant as a result. Not sure if it was written by him or Grok. I worry Elon's going a bit bonkers with drugs or whatever. Conversation here: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1879785727468163505

> I worry Elon's going a bit bonkers with drugs or whatever.

This is most of the reason I don't have a Tesla. The entire company will fold if Musk takes a bit too much ketamine and has a Roseanne Barr moment.

At that point I won't be able to get parts as the vehicles were built from the ground up to be hostile to third party repairs.

I don't want to be left holding the bag because Elon wanted to smoke a bag.

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