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Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

cleantechnica.com

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Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#31

Post by alecco »

jacobgorm wrote: post #15
0x262d wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, owning a tesla is a sign of being poor ?

At least in Denmark where I live, since Tesla started competing on cost a few years ago, and then the DOGE fiasco. It’s the car you get if you’re already a Tesla owner and hardcore believer, or just see a car as a means of transportation and buy purely on specs. The days when Teslas were status symbols are long gone. We can buy so many other interesting EVs here, for example I just had a friend who was an EV hater si…

I visited a friend in EU and we had a lot of problems charging a Renault. It takes forever and it was a pain. One of the network chargers didn't work. Problems of the car detecting the charge. And once we found a working charger we had to leave it for a long time and we lost an appointment.

Tesla has a decent supercharger network. And now Chinese manufacturers are building theirs. AFAIK none of the European brands has anything even remotely like that. I heard people buy hybrids due to this problem.

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#32

Post by rainsford »

DonThomasitos wrote: post #3

They peaked at a time where the competition‘s offering was still immature, partially even retrofitted combustion cars. Now the landscape has changed and TSLA lacks innovation. Personally, i still enjoy fanboy talk from first-gen Tesla drivers while they try to dream of a come back once Elon‘s wonder weapons finally arrive to turn the war.

The thing is Tesla probably has a solid enough foundation of smart people and technology to out compete other EV manufacturers, but they're not going to because they're saddled with today's version of Elon Musk instead of the Elon Musk of 15 years ago. His politics have made the brand radioactive to a lot of potential buyers and even for customers for whom that's not a deal breaker, his idea of innovation at Tesla now is stuff like the Cybertruck.

That said, Tesla is still selling plenty of vehicles and anecdotally I see plenty of new ones driving around my American city, although more than a few have anti-Elon bumper stickers which is usually not a great sign for a brand. But I suspect a lot of that is momentum and the Elon problem is going to get worse and worse for the company as time goes on. His brain seems unlikely to get less melted over time and his politics and company direction seem unlikely to improve Tesla's prospects.

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#33

Post by qcnguy »

DonThomasitos wrote: post #3

They peaked at a time where the competition‘s offering was still immature, partially even retrofitted combustion cars. Now the landscape has changed and TSLA lacks innovation. Personally, i still enjoy fanboy talk from first-gen Tesla drivers while they try to dream of a come back once Elon‘s wonder weapons finally arrive to turn the war.

Seems they have self driving finally cracked, according to Karpathy. If they have finally managed it then they'll have a big advantage over the other manufacturers. Better late than never.

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#34

Post by qcnguy »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #14
timmg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, China is subsidizing everything with a low currency, though. It may cancel out (or maybe more than cancel out) those tariffs.

> Arguably, China is subsidizing everything with a low currency Not really. "Subsidizing everything" is an oxymoron, if you subsidize some production it must be at the expense of other production that is providing the subsidies. > It may cancel out (or maybe more than cancel out) those tariffs. The opposite is true, tariffs reduce demand for Chinese products and thus for Chinese currency, which leads to lower yuan. I…

They subsidize manufacturing of certain specific industries, EV cars being one, at the cost of domestic consumption. Basically they steal Chinese people's savings and use it to give the rest of the world cheap cars.

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#36

Post by Zigurd »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

At what point does Tesla have to sell or shutter production?

Last I checked, Tesla had over $30 billion in cash. Even in the worst case scenario, Tesla could shrink to be a large-ish and niche manufacturer. Until the cash is depleted and production falls to where factory utilization is low enough that fixed costs start to dominate unit margin, it's a business that can continue.

There's plenty to puzzle over: Why not spend part of the cash pile to make robots or semi's or a new model or... less vaporous? I don't suppose we'll know until the stock price prompts Elon or his board to ask that question.

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#37

Post by Zigurd »

mcntsh wrote: post #12

Electric cars in general don’t really make much sense in Germany. Most people live in apartments without access to personal chargers, combined with high electricity cost you end up not even saving money for the inconvenience.

EV sales in Germany were up by more than 40% in 2025. Evidently those problems aren't a showstopper. For what is supposedly a leading EV manufacturer to have a sharp decline in sales while that market is booming is unambiguously a major disaster for them.

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#39

Post by [deleted] »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #20
jacobgorm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Denmark where I live, since Tesla started competing on cost a few years ago, and then the DOGE fiasco. It’s the car you get if you’re already a Tesla owner and hardcore believer, or just see a car as a means of transportation and buy purely on specs. The days when Teslas were status symbols are long gone. We can buy so many other interesting EVs here, for example I just had a friend who was an EV hater si…

The character: https://autotrader.co.nz/news/2025-renault-5-revealed-as-the...

[deleted]

Re: Tesla's Germany Sales Down 72% from Their Peak

#40

Post by jacobgorm »

alecco wrote: post #31
jacobgorm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Denmark where I live, since Tesla started competing on cost a few years ago, and then the DOGE fiasco. It’s the car you get if you’re already a Tesla owner and hardcore believer, or just see a car as a means of transportation and buy purely on specs. The days when Teslas were status symbols are long gone. We can buy so many other interesting EVs here, for example I just had a friend who was an EV hater si…

I visited a friend in EU and we had a lot of problems charging a Renault. It takes forever and it was a pain. One of the network chargers didn't work. Problems of the car detecting the charge. And once we found a working charger we had to leave it for a long time and we lost an appointment. Tesla has a decent supercharger network. And now Chinese manufacturers are building theirs. AFAIK none of the European brands ha…

In Northern Europe we have lots of fast chargers now, and apart from Tesla, which is open to anyone with their app, none are tied to a particular car brand. I’ve never encountered problems fast-charging my BMWs. Most cars you can buy today have the option to pre-heat the battery, but it is possible that not all owners know how to activate that. The newer Renaults run on Google software, which is said to be very user friendly and good at route planning.
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