Elon Musk’s toxicity among many Europeans is such that even owners of Tesla news websites have ditched Muskmobiles for other EV brands. Jon Gibbs of Birmingham, England, runs what he calls the “world’s biggest Tesla inventory site.” Tesla-info, Gibbs says, stores the “largest database of new and used Tesla motors in the world.” He used to own one himself—but he now drives a BMW iX electric SUV.
Likewise, Tim Kraaijvanger of the Netherlands, founder of Tesla360.nl, a Dutch everything-Tesla site, recently sold his Model Y and bought a Polestar instead. Both entrepreneurs pin their car switch on Musk’s support for European far-right political parties, and his inauguration rally arm gestures.
“While Musk might get away with a [Nazi-like] salute in some parts of the world, European markets reject such behavior,” Kraaijvanger tells WIRED. “World War Two still casts a long shadow.” He may be right. Tesla sales are in free fall in Europe right now. Last month, Norway—where EVs overtook internal combustion vehicles in total market share in 2024—recorded a biting 37.9 percent slump. At the same time, Tesla sales in France fell by a thumping 63.4 percent. And it gets even worse: In Spain, Tesla sales plummeted by 75.4 percent.
English campaign group Led by Donkeys and Germany’s Center for Political Beauty beamed an image of Musk making his Nazi-like salute onto Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin, with “Heil” projected next to the lit Tesla logo.
Photograph: Led by Donkeys
Kraaijvanger, founder of online marketing firm Stormachtig, started Tesla360.nl in 2020, then rolled out a German version three years later. He has owned several Tesla cars and, later this year, planned to upgrade to the refreshed $59,990 Model Y Juniper. Offloading his current Model Y has cost him dearly: “I received only about half of the [Tesla’s] original new price when selling it,” he revealed. “But I do not wish to be associated with [Musk’s] ideology.”
He has yet to ditch his URLs, but then running websites is mainly anonymous. On the other hand, driving a Tesla on public roads is becoming increasingly problematic in Europe. Social media is rife with images of Teslas vandalized with Swastikas and expletives. Dealerships are also being targeted. Vandals sprayed graffiti on a Tesla car showroom in The Hague in early February, defacing the building with “No to Nazis” and sweary anti-fascist slogans.
On a grander scale, the English campaign group Led by Donkeys recently teamed up with Germany’s Center for Political Beauty to beam an image of Elon Musk making the inauguration salute onto Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin, with the word “Heil” projected next to the lit Tesla logo. “This is who Elon Musk really is,” stressed Led by Donkeys across their well-followed social media accounts. “Don’t buy a Tesla” urged the activists.
Startup crowdfunded group Everyone Hates Elon has been distributing anti-Tesla stickers in London with left-wing outlet Novara Media reporting that “hundreds” of Tesla owners have returned to their parked EVs to find them defaced with hard-to-remove roundels featuring a grinning Musk plastered with a Hitler-aping toothbrush mustache and the request not to “buy a Swastikar.”
Some Tesla owners are themselves defacing their cars, with the “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy” bumper sticker being a particular favorite. “I have seen massive uplift in sales across Europe,” Matthew Hiller of Hawaii-based Mad Puffer Stickers tells WIRED. “Leading the way are buyers from France, Norway, and the UK,” he adds. “I used to want a Tesla until Elon turned into a full-on fascist,” claims Hiller on his otherwise fish-themed store. He figures there’s a “lot of disgruntled Tesla owners out there” and claims to have sold thousands of sticker sets across the world.
“I went so far as to test drive a Tesla in 2023, but at that time, [Musk’s] purchase of Twitter was complete, and I saw what he was doing to the platform,” says Hiller. “Skewing the algorithm to favor alt-right voices, promoting disinformation, banning people he didn’t like. Using his influence to wade into politics really turned me off buying a Tesla—it’s a MAGA hat on wheels.”
Vandals sprayed graffiti on a Tesla car showroom in The Hague in early February.
John van der Tol
Musk’s “salute” has boosted Hiller’s sales. “It has been a sustained 500 sales a day since the salute,” he says. “That moment broke through all the usual Elon noise. Even the [MAGA-lite folks] who only casually pay attention to what is happening in the government woke up at that moment and were like ‘Holy shit, what have we done?’”
Another of Hiller’s most popular stickers for Tesla owners states that the driver is now a member of the “Anti Elon Tesla Club.” She might not have yet bought such a sticker, but Tesla shareholder Karen Róbertsdóttir of Reykjavik, Iceland, should perhaps become at least an associate member. “The Tesla groups over here in Iceland used to never have the sort of ‘I can’t buy a Tesla because of Elon’ stuff you’d see in the States—but now it’s everywhere, and the people I talk to elsewhere in Europe are seeing the same thing,” she wrote over the weekend on Tesla’s YouTube channel.
“I’ve defended you guys so much over the years, and you make great products, but even I can’t stick up for you anymore,” she stated.
Róbertsdóttir, now a software developer for Icelandic air traffic control company Isavia, started her tech career as founder of Iowa-based Celadon Applications. This 2009 startup developed software for electric vehicles. A long-time Tesla stockholder, one of her resolutions was put to the vote at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in 2023, calling on Tesla’s board to release a succession plan for Musk and other “key persons” whose behavior could create a risk for the company and shareholders.
“When people look at this company,” she said at the meeting, “they see the company as a synonym for its CEO.” (The board recommended rejecting the resolution, and it was duly voted down.)
While some shareholders have already voted with their feet—in January, Dutch civil service pension fund ABP sold its €782 million stake in Tesla, for instance—most still seem unbothered by Musk’s trolling, or his apparent takeover of the US government’s executive branch with the help of young coders. Musk’s “pedo guy” comments against a British cave rescue diver, successfully defended in a 2019 defamation trial, didn’t ruffle that many shareholder feathers, but it’s harder to ignore sales cull calls.
In Vienna, more Tesla cars have been targeted for vandalism.
In late January, Poland’s sports and tourism minister Sławomir Nitras lobbied for a Tesla boycott. “There is no justification for any reasonable Pole to continue purchasing Teslas,” he said.
In Germany, where Musk has caused outrage by endorsing far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), going so far as to appear as a surprise video guest at the party’s national election campaign launch last month, several companies have cut ties with Tesla. Drugstore chain Rossmann, with 4,700 stores across Europe, has replaced Tesla in its electric fleet with other EV brands, citing the “incompatibility” of its corporate values and Musk’s ideology.
German energy company LichtBlick revealed an uncoupling from Tesla on a LinkedIn post. “We are pulling the plug on Tesla vehicles in our fleet,” said the announcement, with the firm’s real estate head, Kevin Lütje, clarifying that “Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump and his recommendation to vote for a right-wing populist and right-wing extremist party … is in no way compatible with LichtBlick’s values.” He stated that “climate protection and electromobility are extremely important to us, but in the future we will be relying on providers other than Tesla.”
Such boycotts benefit Tesla’s rivals. “We have seen an increase in people writing to us and switching to Polestar in recent months,” Polestar’s German CEO Michael Lohscheller tells WIRED. Lohscheller called Musk’s endorsement of AfD “totally unacceptable.”
There are many reasons for Tesla’s waning fortunes in Europe—including stale model line-up (Geely’s Gothenburg-developed Zeekr 7X SUV has more bells and whistles than a Model Y) and expense (a Model 3 costs €39,990 in Europe, while many better EVs are biting into this price point)—but Musk’s steady descent from real-life Tony Stark to MAGA power broker seems to be a key reason for Tesla’s current precipitous fall from grace.
Tesla sales dropped 13 percent across the whole European Union in 2024, according to data from the industry body ACEA, and just like in Spain and France, in many key markets the fall is still steeper. According to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, Tesla registered only 1,277 new cars in Germany in January, a year-on-year drop of 59.5 percent.
Tesla was contacted for this piece and did not respond, but there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel for Tesla sales in Europe. A recent survey by Dutch news outlet EenVandaag got responses from 432 Tesla drivers. Some “31 percent are either contemplating selling their car or have already done so,” the survey found. Forty percent of owners felt embarrassed to own a Tesla. By any measure, these are statistics that no car company wants to own.