“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 acknowledged.
Róbertsdóttir, now a software program developer for Icelandic air site visitors management firm Isavia, began her tech profession as founding father of Iowa-based Celadon Purposes. This 2009 startup developed software program for electrical automobiles. A protracted-time Tesla stockholder, certainly one of her resolutions was put to the vote at Tesla’s annual shareholder assembly in 2023, calling on Tesla’s board to launch a succession plan for Musk and different “key persons” whose conduct might create a danger for the corporate and shareholders.
“When people look at this company,” she stated on the assembly, “they see the company as a synonym for its CEO.” (The board really helpful rejecting the decision, and it was duly voted down.)
Whereas some shareholders have already voted with their ft—in January, Dutch civil service pension fund ABP offered its €782 million stake in Tesla, as an example—most nonetheless appear unbothered by Musk’s trolling, or his obvious takeover of the US authorities’s government department with the assistance of younger coders. Musk’s “pedo guy” feedback towards a British cave rescue diver, efficiently defended in a 2019 defamation trial, didn’t ruffle that many shareholder feathers, but it surely’s more durable to disregard gross sales cull calls.
In late January, Poland’s sports activities and tourism minister Sławomir Nitras lobbied for a Tesla boycott. “There is no justification for any reasonable Pole to continue purchasing Teslas,” he stated.
In Germany, the place Musk has triggered outrage by endorsing far-right political occasion Various for Germany (AfD), going as far as to look as a shock video visitor on the occasion’s nationwide election marketing campaign launch final month, a number of corporations have lower ties with Tesla. Drugstore chain Rossmann, with 4,700 shops throughout Europe, has changed Tesla in its electrical fleet with different EV manufacturers, citing the “incompatibility” of its company values and Musk’s ideology.
German vitality firm LichtBlick revealed an uncoupling from Tesla on a LinkedIn submit. “We are pulling the plug on Tesla vehicles in our fleet,” stated the announcement, with the agency’s actual property 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 acknowledged 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 profit 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 referred to as Musk’s endorsement of AfD “totally unacceptable.”
There are lots of causes for Tesla’s waning fortunes in Europe—together with stale mannequin line-up (Geely’s Gothenburg-developed Zeekr 7X SUV has extra bells and whistles than a Mannequin Y) and expense (a Mannequin 3 prices €39,990 in Europe, whereas many higher EVs are biting into this value level)—however Musk’s regular descent from real-life Tony Stark to MAGA energy dealer appears to be a key purpose for Tesla’s present precipitous fall from grace.
Tesla gross sales dropped 13 p.c throughout the entire European Union in 2024, based on information from the business physique ACEA, and identical to in Spain and France, in lots of key markets the autumn continues to be steeper. In line with the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, Tesla registered just one,277 new vehicles in Germany in January, a year-on-year drop of 59.5 p.c.
Tesla was contacted for this piece and didn’t reply, however there appears to be no mild on the finish of the tunnel for Tesla gross sales in Europe. A current survey by Dutch information outlet EenVandaag obtained responses from 432 Tesla drivers. Some “31 percent are either contemplating selling their car or have already done so,” the survey discovered. Forty p.c of householders felt embarrassed to personal a Tesla. By any measure, these are statistics that no automobile firm needs to personal.
