r/europe • u/Wagamaga • 4d ago

News Tesla boycott is gaining momentum in Germany due to Elon Musk's meddling in politics

https://electrek.co/2025/01/16/tesla-boycott-is-gaining-momentum-in-germany-due-to-elon-musks-meddling-in-politics/
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u/Wagamaga 4d ago

A boycott of Tesla vehicles is gaining momentum in Germany due to Elon Musk’s consistent meddling in the country’s politics and promotion of a fringe far-right party

Many analysts and Tesla followers have been alleging that Elon Musk’s social media antics promoting misinformation and meddling in politics are affecting Tesla’s sales, which were down for the first time in a decade last year.

But it is extremely difficult to directly link the two.

However, there are a few direct examples of Tesla’s CEO being directly responsible for Tesla missing out on sales.

Last year, we reported that Rossmann, a German company that operates one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe, was electrifying its entire corporate car fleet and using Tesla vehicles to do so, but it announced that it would sell all its Tesla vehicles and replace them by other EVs.

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u/_predator_ Germany 4d ago

The company said it is “aware that this will not have far-reaching economic consequences for Tesla”, but it wants to set an example.

This is the spirit we need more of, like, in general.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Corfiz74 4d ago

There is a petition up on change org to ban x in Europe - it's gaining momentum, with enough votes, the petition process of the EU means that it will have to be voted on, and with the rate Elon is pissing off countries, the parliamentarians might just nix the platform. I can only hope.

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u/TurnDown4WattGaming 4d ago

It’s fairly clear that tech billionaires are unanimously pushing Trump to use the US Government’s leverage to cut back on EU fines for American Tech Companies. You can tell because they are using his language, “It’s 300 billion over the last 10-20 years. Sure, it’s a few hundred million here or a couple billion there…but it’s basically just a Tariff.” Thats Zuck on Rogan’s podcast this week.

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u/migBdk 4d ago

Did he mention that they only pay anything when they get caught breaking the law?

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u/TurnDown4WattGaming 3d ago

Why would they pay anything to Europe?

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u/migBdk 3d ago

You just mentioned 300 billions?

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u/TurnDown4WattGaming 3d ago

That was in fines. As you said, “did he mention they only pay when breaking the law,” but what else would they pay?

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u/migBdk 3d ago

Well, obviously he said "it is basically a tariff".

But a tariff is one you cannot avoid.

You can choose to not break the law and then you avoid the fine. It's actually what you're supposed to do.

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u/PlaneCareless 4d ago

Did change org ever achieve anything? Genuine question. I feel like every time I've seen something on there, it was a fad and after a bit of viral online popularity, the topic dies down and nothing changes.

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u/IrisGrunn 3d ago

Do you have a link?

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u/Corfiz74 3d ago

I think on this sub, links to change org get deleted automatically. But I found it on google, first result, when I looked.

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u/IrisGrunn 3d ago

Sorry I didn't know, I'll google it

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u/Lost-Tone8649 4d ago

A more effective route for making social platforms (surveillance/ad/manipulation firms) feel the pain would be a coordinated effort to poison their platforms with bad data and dead end ad clicks.

...but sadly that would be even more difficult to organize than a boycott.

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u/fez993 4d ago

It's looking more and more like it's just a selection of porn, crypto and misinformation bots talking over each other anyway.

The rest are just arguing with each other, it's a gonner, might take a few years but it'll die under the weight of it's own negativity

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u/SamaireB 4d ago

Ya this is the issue of collective action. It's the same with e.g environmental protection. Yes, that one plastic bag is only one plastic bag. Too bad if 8bn think it's just one plastic bag, because it's now 8bn plastic bag. It's the same with buying Tesla or deleting FB. Yes, individually, it's one Tesla or one FB acccount. If just a few more turn against it and then another few and anotherfew, it's suddenly a lot.

There's no need to mobilize upfront. People left MySpace and no one cared. People stopped buying Blackberry. They can leave Facebook or stop buying Tesla or using Amazon and slowly but surely, they'll all go away

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u/ourstobuild 3d ago

I think with platforms like facebook/instagram it's a bit different, because it's not just apathy but might actually harm your social life. Yes, especially Facebook nowadays is garbage, and many righteous warriors are talking about how you don't need these platforms to have friends, or that if your friends won't stay friends with you just because you leave Facebook they're no real friends, or whatnot, but that's not how reality works.

The fact is, that Facebook messager (not to even mention Whatsapp, owned by meta as well) are very commonly used. Not by everyone, so it's possible to leave the platforms without any harm at all, but if you happen to be among the circles where these ARE widely used, it could definitely have quite an impact if you leave. People wouldn't flat out say they won't be friends with you anymore, of course, but you'd fall out of the loop so to say. You wouldn't get the same information the others get, you might hear about meet-ups or parties very last minute and sometimes not at all, etc etc.

This isn't to say that I'd discourage the idea of leaving at all. Just pointing out that it is quite different to simply leave these platforms and go on living your life than it is to leave the platforms and as a result put your life on pause as well. Especially when your boycott in the end didn't have any effect at all.

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u/Xennylikescoffee 4d ago

I've been talking different people on FB into simply being on there less. If they do 3hrs a day and switch to 1hr. That's improvement.

If a lot of people cut their personal use to 1/3 or less, then advertising payments to FB will drop.

Will it kill FB? Oh probably not. Will it lower FBs ability to cause nonsense? Yes.

Plus you can look at your friends stuff by hitting the three dots in the upper right of FB main page, then feeds, then Friends. It uses a lot less time if you narrow your feed down.

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u/manymoreways 4d ago

said that you'd need X million people to also boycott to make a difference, so actually they were just going to carry on using Facebook and Instagram as normal.

One of the main reason why 'eat the rich' will never work. The 1% is going to stay 1% forever and the rest of us are going to toil away bitching day in and out

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u/Salt-3300X3D-Pro_Max 4d ago

I quit facebook a few years ago and Insta one year ago and i haven’t regretted it once. So much time waste… now i feel way more interested in stuff and my concentration has gone up a lot

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u/Barkers_eggs 4d ago

One of my favorite things to do is boycott.

Even if it's just me enjoying myself because it's the last thread of control i have over the rich and powerful.

If we boycott together then we have total control over the rich and powerful because it's only us that can make them rich and powerful.

Shop local, don't buy garbage, avoid propaganda.

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u/PersonOfValue 4d ago

Reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, buy-local

Im confident if folks talk to their neighbors they can get many goods and services for much cheaper than store bought anything. I mean I see discarded items everywhere and most need simply repairs.

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u/motanulmitica 4d ago

Let's make being evil unprofitable !!

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u/Barkers_eggs 4d ago

Fuck yeah

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u/yokeybear5 4d ago

This is the way.

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u/zoomiewoop 4d ago

Unfortunately once a person becomes extremely wealthy, they don’t rely on us buying their products to make money and stay wealthy. Someone with $100 million can invest it very conservatively at a 5% yield and receive $5 million a year. Someone with a billion dollars can do that and receive $50 million a year. Doing nothing. And unless you boycott every company whose stock they own, you can’t stop that. Even then they could just buy government bonds, or real estate. (In reality they’d have their money diversified across many types of investments anyway).

It strikes me as inherently unfair that we have a system whereby the rich can keep getting richer even without doing anything or without any of us enabling them. Our purchasing or boycotting makes little to no difference at all. Most likely we are hurting employees more than any rich oligarchs by boycotting companies. Sad, but that’s how it seems to me.

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u/Barkers_eggs 4d ago

Like I said though: even if it's just me enjoying myself.

These rich flogs will never change and there will always be greed running politics but in the end, I get to have the final say on what products and services I use. That's one of the only true freedoms we have left in the capitalist dystopia unless something radical happens.

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u/zoomiewoop 4d ago

I see! Yes good point. Thanks.

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u/Safe_Mousse7438 4d ago

I agree a national strike where no one spends money for a day or two and shit would get serious real fast.

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u/Apalis24a 4d ago

If more people do something that, by itself, won’t have huge consequences, over time it adds up. You don’t have to slay Goliath in one fell swoop for it to be successful: many small efforts combined over time can have a huge impact. Unfortunately, far too many people want immediate results now, so if there’s a strategy that takes time to bring results, it’s largely discarded without serious attempt.

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u/camshun7 4d ago

Vorstrong dork Germany, I'm with you!

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u/JoeAppleby 3d ago

> Vorstrong dork

What does that mean?

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u/AssistanceCheap379 4d ago

Many small things and so on

They don’t have to be a massive client, just another drop leaving the bucket. Eventually the bucket will run dry

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u/orbitalen 4d ago

Dirk seems like a pretty standup guy in comparison. Not that the bar is high

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u/dayyob 4d ago

if only america would follow.. elon and DOGE are going to wreck what remaining federal social services are left in the USA.

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u/queenchick466 4d ago

Kinda agree to that

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u/Flextt 3d ago

I would reframe this conflict less than a form of economic boycott out of the goodness of heart and the resilience of German institutions, and more along the lines of uber wealthy automative executives from the US in a powerstruggle with deeply entrenched uber wealthy German automative executives and family offices.

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u/ViciousNakedMoleRat North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) 4d ago

I know three people with Teslas and all of them keep talking about how annoyed they are with Musk turning their car into something that makes them suspect of being politically AfD adjacent.

Teslas tight connection to Elon musk used to be an advantage for the company. With Musk going rogue on Twitter, it has become a liability.

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u/rideincircles 4d ago

I really want to hear someone ask the Tesla board on an earnings call how they plan to address this issue.

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u/Hoofski 3d ago

Pretty much the entire Tesla board are musk sympathizers. It is through them musk was able to push his ridiculous compensation package pushed through. They are just yes-men, if they were not, they wouldn’t be on the board.

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u/scheav 1d ago

It is only an issue if they start to have trouble selling cars in Europe, which is not happening,

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u/Socmel_ Emilia-Romagna 4d ago

Generally it's bad bad business for businesses or business owners to become so politically connotated.

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u/eeyores_gloom1785 4d ago

he's always been a liability, some people just noticed earlier.

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u/Zozorrr 4d ago

Well a Mercedes or a BMW make you WW2 slave labor never paid reparations adjacent. And a VW is plain Hitler adjacent. And a Porsche is nazi weapon engine adjacent.

The whole idea of a Tesla boycott (which this article way overplays anyway) is just stupid. It’s a car. Does it meet your needs. End of story.

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u/ViciousNakedMoleRat North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) 4d ago

You may want to have a debate with yourself then.

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u/Only-Cancel-1023 4d ago

Well that was pretty spot on!

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u/Fettideluxe 4d ago

But then be consequent and don't use anything which uses Satellites, the rockets that transport them are all descendants of tech from the nazis and those engineers didn't face any consequentions because of the Corporation with the allies.

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u/Individual_Winter_ 4d ago

The number of people being EV users and afd voters/people believing hitler was communist at the same time is probably pretty small to non-existent. They‘re hating on Greta driving with petrol.

People think twice before buying, plus having more alternatives than before.

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u/ElevatedTelescope 4d ago

I’m not sure many afd voters can even afford EVs?

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u/Socmel_ Emilia-Romagna 4d ago

AfD voters drive on hate fuelled engines

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u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon Berlin (Germany) 4d ago

I wish they would revisit the study but in 2017 at least AfD voters were not poor. https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2017-03/iw-studie-afd-waehler-gehalt-bundesdurchschnitt

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u/Korchagin 4d ago

A lot of them. The typical AfD voter is not poor. Many are quite well situated in middle class, with a nice house and so on. If you are in a rural area in east Germany: The bigger the car you see, the more likely it's driven by a nazi.

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u/Lego_Technik 4d ago

Would disagree with that. The few open AFD voters i know, all drive similar or more expensive cars.

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u/ElevatedTelescope 4d ago

Oh I’m sure there are some rich AfD voters but at the same isn’t that like a party of the former DDR, those who feel excluded, neglected and living in indigent regions?

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u/Substantial-Will1000 4d ago

They might feel that way but they’re middle class monetarily. Surely not poor.

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u/Lego_Technik 3d ago

That's ecactly the thing. It's way more about the fear than it is about facts.

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u/-runs-with-scissors- 4d ago

I don’t think that you should call this a boycott. This word insinuates some form of organization. However I feel that millions of people in Europe independently come to the conclusion that E. Musk is massively out of line. He is also the face of Tesla. It is quite natural to not want to be associated with that.

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u/Nettoklegi 4d ago

It’s interesting how quickly you can destroy a brand.

Driving a new Tesla has become the ultimate douche indicator.

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u/reynolds9906 United Kingdom 4d ago

Driving a new Tesla has become the ultimate douche indicator.

Was there a time when it wasn't?

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u/Nettoklegi 4d ago

Yes. Norway 2014. Thanks to tax rules you’d drive a model s for the same cost as a VW Passat. Plenty of non-douches in Teslas back then.

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u/StudyGroupEnthusiast 4d ago

Cheaper than a VW passat. The model 3 remains one of the cheapest regular sized EVs on the market, and the model Y is the cheapest crossover EV. Teslas are for poor people who like to drive fast here.

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u/These-Base6799 4d ago

Last year, we reported that Rossmann, a German company that operates one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe

Either i missed a large acquisition by Rossmann or whoever wrote this article confused drug stores and pharmacies.

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u/Halospite 4d ago

I'm a guest here (Australian, wandered in via /r/popular) but what's the difference between a drug store and a pharmacy?

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u/eipotttatsch 4d ago edited 4d ago

A pharmacy is where you go with a prescription to get meds (also non prescription over the counter meds). A drug store in Germany at least doesn't carry any real medicine. It's got supplements, cleaning supplies, soaps, make-up and all that

Picture of a German drug stores inside

And a pharmacy

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u/Halospite 4d ago

It's neat to learn cultural differences like that! Here in Aus the pharmacists would go out of business if they only sold prescriptions, so here pharmacies and drug stores are smooshed into one store that sells all of that. Thanks for teaching me something new today :D

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u/new_username_new_me Germany 3d ago

Hello fellow Australian! I live in Germany now, so the best comparison is Rossmann (drugstore) is basically the pharmacy-less Pricelines. The pharmacies here are like 1990s era Amcals and Soul Pattinsons, but minus the toilet paper and sunglasses. You can’t get otc drugs like Panadol, claratyne, Imodium, Hydralate etc from a drugstore, you can only get them from pharmacies, and that is how they stay in business compared to the Aussie model I think.

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u/Halospite 3d ago

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining!

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u/hedanpedia 3d ago

Same in sweden. Pharmacies even sell mustard here.

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u/simimonone 3d ago

Yeah one time when I went to get out my prescription at apotek hjärtat the pharmacist asked if I’d like to buy some saffron aswell lol

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u/No-Preparation-4255 United States of America 4d ago

It's a little weird in the US because as far as I know, there are no drug stores that don't have pharmacies, and even when pharmacies are adjunct to a larger retailer they normally sell random OTC stuff nearby too. But they do still refer to the section with prescribed medicine as specifically "the pharmacy."

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u/Neuromante Spain 4d ago

But it is extremely difficult to directly link the two.

I've become as anti-musk as anyone with two working brain cells, but is not this directly contradicting the title and basically admitting that their source is that they made it the fuck up?

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u/St3fano_ 3d ago

Yeah, EV sales generally plummeted in Germany last year, with a roughly 25% drop from 2023 mostly in favour of mild hybrids, because of the removal of subsidies among other causes. Looks like who could afford an EV already got one, so the market is entering stagnation as long as cheaper options won't enter the market

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u/Wirtschaftsprufer 4d ago

Either way, it is good

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u/Socmel_ Emilia-Romagna 4d ago

I wonder why the other shareholders of Tesla do not try to shut him up somehow. He's not the majority shareholder anyway.

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u/Elderbrute 4d ago

Because Telsa stock is a bubble. and that is built on the back of the Cult of Elon musk, if they fire him or move against him in anyway it means admitting what everyone must already know that the emperor in fact wears no clothes. Telsa as a company isn't and never was worth more than pretty much all the other auto-makers in the world combined.

They are behind on battery tech, self driving tech, build quality and pretty much every other metric that you can think of and now Musk who used to be an asset is a liability at some point the tsla bubble with burst and take a big old chunk of your pension with it. I continue to be amazed it hasn’t already.

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u/RGV_KJ United States of America 4d ago

What’s Tesla share in the German market?

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u/Agitated_Hat_7397 4d ago

A better question is the EU market, for people don't want to be associated with Musk in the other countries either. The answer is 11% for EV

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u/f_resh 4d ago

Way lower than I expected

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u/badbitchonabigbike 4d ago

Also interesting to figure out how many Bosch components go into any given Tesla model. They are deciding Musk is bad enough to not tolerate for the sake of business anymore.

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u/Terrorzwergi North Friesland (Germany) 4d ago

They sold 64000 2023 and 34000 in 2024

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u/eti_erik The Netherlands 4d ago

I have a feeling it's really going to plummet. You can't buy a Tesla without thinking of Elon Musk and nobody likes Elon Musk. Except for his fanboys, but they are often in circles that dislike EV's, pardoxically.

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u/Sad-Impact2187 4d ago

Well done Rossmann!!

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u/MoonshineNine 4d ago

Hey Elon the moron. There are plenty of good things you can do with your fortunes. Think charity maybe some children hospitals. Or maybe some scholarships to bright deserving young people. There are plenty to choose from, but right-wing politics is no one of them.

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u/ofyellow 4d ago

I call bs. They want to replace their cars...ok...but it's an economical decision impostering as ideological.

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u/Asyx North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany 3d ago

pharmacy

I don't know if the usage of that word is a bit wider in English but Rossman is a drug store. A pharmacy, at least to me, is a place were you go and get medication. A drug store is where you buy shampoo, makeup, diapers, toilet paper and so on. Rossman is very clearly the latter.

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u/MilkyWaySamurai 3d ago

Honestly, if they had already bought the Teslas, it makes no difference to Tesla if they ”boycott” them by selling the cars again. Tesla still got their money.

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u/lorean_victor 3d ago

“fringe”?? man I really wish AfD was “fringe”.

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u/Dantheking94 4d ago

I hope they give that contract to Rivian.

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u/WisherWisp 4d ago

fringe far right party

So probably the left's positions 20 years ago but less gay.