Tesla Sales Are Crashing Worldwide Even as EV Sales Increase

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Elon Musk’s increasingly prominent role in American politics is dragging down sales of his Tesla automobiles around the globe.

The report from electric vehicle trade publication Inside EVs was highlighted by Jonathan Last at The Bulwark on Monday, who described Tesla’s sales as having “fallen off a cliff” over the past year through this January. Among the statistics from the report noted by Last were multiple regions where Tesla sales dropped even though overall EV sales were rising — illustrating how this wasn’t an industry-wide decline, but rather a phenomenon specific to Musk’s company:

California leads the United States in EV sales. In 2024 EV sales of all non-Tesla brands increased by 1.4 percent in the state while Tesla sales declined by 11.6 percent. That’s a steep drop in America’s most important EV market.

Germany is Europe’s biggest car market and Tesla has been the German EV sales champ for some time. Last month Tesla sales in Germany dropped by 60 percent compared to a year ago. Not a typo.

In France, year-over-year Tesla sales dropped by 63 percent in January.

In the U.K. overall EV sales were up 7 percent in January compared to January 2024, but Tesla sales were down 8 percent.

In China, January’s Tesla sales were down by 11.5 percent year-over-year.

The reason for the global sales decline, wrote Last, was that Musk was extraordinarily good at raising his own profile and that of his company, so their identities were increasingly linked. By allying himself with President Donald Trump, incessantly amplifying misinformation and hate speech, and supporting far-right movements like Germany’s AfD party, Musk has “antagonized more than half of the West’s potential Tesla customers on purpose” — and that much of that occurred before Trump’s second inauguration and the controversial rollout of the Musk-led DOGE.

Musk has essentially morphed “from OG EV Deity to MAGA superstar,” a report by EV Politics described how his appeal was flipped to now rank notably higher among people who aren’t interested in buying electric vehicles (EVs). He’s 12 points more popular with people who drive cars with traditional gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines (net +5) than with those who drive either EVs or plug-in hybrids (net -7). Musk’s popularity rating just with pickup truck drivers is a net +18, a group of customers that doesn’t easily translate to EVs in general and especially the Cybertruck.

Tesla now has a stark partisan divide in opinion polls, an issue that doesn’t happen with most other major automakers. Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen all poll “roughly the same way” with Trump voters and those who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris.

In contrast, EV Politics reported, “[t]here is a giant disparity in how Trump and Harris voters view Tesla,” and that’s “driven by partisan views of Musk. Trump voters had a net +28 impression of Tesla; Harris voters were net -18.

That kind of divided opinion on Musk continues across other demographic categories, with Musk more popular with drivers of pickup trucks and gasoline-powered vehicles than among people who already drive EVs or would consider buying one.

Last also cited a CarEdge report to point out how market forces were revealing Tesla’s unpopularity. “If you want to know what the market really thinks about a product, look at the depreciation charts,” he wrote. “Tesla is dead forking last.” CarEdge condemned Tesla to the very bottom of their luxury car rankings, noting that “hybrid and electric cars typically don’t hold their value, as electric car technology changes more quickly than iPhones apps.” But Tesla’s 50.44% retention of their resale value after 5 years wasn’t just the lowest among luxury brands, it was worse than the regular brands, well below Chevrolet (61.12%), Dodge (60.97%), Chrysler (59.07%), and Ford (58.76%).

Having previously owned cars in the last two categories above Tesla — a Ford Escape that was plagued by a cascading series of coolant system malfunctions that once left me broken down in the mountains next to a dead raccoon and a hand-me-down PT Cruiser that managed to be even more of a nightmare — Tesla having a lower resale value than those cursed machines might be an especially troubling sign for the company’s future prospects.

This article has been updated with additional information.