Picking a fight with the European labor unions was not a smart move in hindsight.

Backing AfD in Germany and calling them Germany's "best hope for the future" likely rubs the rest of the non-AfD polity the wrong way. He turned driving a Tesla into a political stance in Germany.

It is here in the US too. I drive on OG Model Y and silently judge new Model 3/Y purchasers. Trained to do so by the Cybertruck.

And various other European far-right parties; it wasn't just AfD.

Also, y'know, the salute (still amazed that he was pretty much given a pass for that in the US).

>Picking a fight with the European labor unions

Trying to rule when the local custom is to negotiate - US companies keep repeating that mistake. It has not gone well once that I'd know of. Unions are often more concerned about the long term than company leadership, that's an asset!

Wordy-Title: Tesla (TSLA) can’t find the bottom in Europe as 2026 starts with another brutal decline

There's lots of support at 0

Canadians are starting to hate Tesla too. Why alienate liberal aligned people by acting like a fascist?

The popularity of the Volkswagen shows that Europe has no objection to (formerly) Nazi cars, but there are limits ...

So, VW as a brand has origins there, but there's little other continuity. It's a fairly different situation.

Same for Ford in the US, right?

I once saw a Volkswagen with the vanity plate "FORD". A little concerning.

I think people are missing the joke here (notice the italicised 'are').

Not uncommon :-)

Indeed,"formerly" carries real weight. It's one thing to have car company with highly distributed ownership that was once Nazi aligned the better part of a century ago, and an entirely different thing to today have a personal piggy bank company for a billionaire Nazi active in global politics.

If a VW exec throws a Hitler salute in public, they will no longer have a job the next day.

When Musk does it, he gets a trillion-dollar pay package.

So no, there's no comparison to be drawn here.

Long ago Nazi vs currently another brainfart away from invading

> Across the wider region (EU, UK, EFTA), market share fell to 1.7% by November 2025

Tesla was never mainstream in Europe.

It was never super-mainstream, but it was the top EV group in terms of sales for a few quarters (mostly in 2019). It'll likely soon no longer be in the top ten; looks like for Q1 it's on track to be smaller than Stellantis (the company which owns all the brands that you're surprised still exist) and Geely, who themselves are marginally relevant in Europe.

Tesla was never super-mainstream, regular-mainstream or mainstream. It was top EV when there were no other EVs. Stellantis has 16% market share in Europe.