Tesla d'Elon Musk continues to undergo an alarming collapse on the main European markets, with high two-digit reductions in the automotive registrations reported in France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland in April.
While the model remains there throughout the best -selling vehicle in the world, its updated “juniper” variant seems to fall flat in a region where Tesla has once prospered. The exception, Norway, has shown only a modest gain of 12%, offering little relief for the besieged car manufacturer.
Europe, the second largest EV market after China, has become an increasingly hostile territory for the Musk brand. The latest figures show a decrease of 59% in France, 81% in Sweden – where a dispute of workforce continues to hike – 74% in the Netherlands and 50% in Switzerland. These are not peripheral markets but countries with solid savings, in -depth EV infrastructure and adoption rates of historically high electric vehicles.
Register For TEKEDIA Mini-MBA Edition 17 (June 9 – September 6, 2025)) Today for early reductions. An annual for access to Blurara.com.
Tekedia Ai in Masterclass Business open registration.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-INivest in large world startups.
Register become a better CEO or director with CEO program and director of Tekedia.
Political controversy meets commercial benefits
However, Tesla's ruin momentum in Europe is not only due to manufacturing delays or market fatigue. A growing consensus among analysts and initiates is that the company's misfortunes are deeply tangled with the political advocacy increasingly extreme right of Elon Musk, in the United States and abroad.
Musk's polarizing political conduct even had the most loyal customers of Tesla. In Germany, Musk openly supported the far -right alternative Für Deutschland (AFD), a party recently declared an extremist organization. In the United Kingdom, its vocal support for white nationalist characters like Tommy Robinson has alienated traditional consumers, leading to general disillusionment with the brand image of Tesla.
The fallout seem to reach Tesla's conference room. Although denied publicly, a WSJ report said that Tesla's board of directors had started to discreetly seek a potential successor of the CEO – an indication of internal discomfort on Musk's ability to balance Tesla's commercial strategy with its growing political crusade.
DOGE and the distracted CEO
The addition of another layer to distraction is the management of Musk on the government's ministry of efficiency (DOGE), a federal agency created by President Donald Trump in 2025 to reduce unnecessary government spending. Musk was appointed to direct Doge in order to cut 2 billions of dollars from federal expenses. So far, the agency has managed about $ 150 billion in discounts – a figure that has been far from expectations.
Doge's efforts have been riddled with controversy. The use by Musk of the AI to automate federal jobs, as well as scanning reductions which eliminated more than 120,000 government positions, triggered demonstrations and legal challenges. Although Musk recently announced that he would go back to Doge to focus more on Tesla, many think that damage, both to the confidence of the brand and Tesla investors, can already be irreversible.
Critics say that the agency, although ambitious in the scope, has become another platform for Musk's ideological war against what he calls “the awakened bureaucracy”. This rhetoric has not played well in Europe, where public feeling tends to promote institutional stability in relation to impetuous libertarianism.
Sales decrease, the cost of Musk's refusal to retreat
Despite increasing pressure, Musk refused to temper his political tone. From the attack on the judges involved in cases against Trump to make fun of the opponents of its government restructuring powered by AI, Musk is supposed to exploit the X platform as an extension of his personal ideology.
Even its public renovation limited to Tesla, claiming that it “refocus” after deciding Doge, was encountered by skepticism. Investors remain uncertain if Tesla's CEO is really ready to separate his political character from the commercial future of the automaker.
While Germany and the United Kingdom have not yet published their data on sales in April, little expect a dramatic rebound. For a company once considered the avant-garde of sustainable transport, Tesla is now exceeded not only by competitors, but by the growing list of distractions and controversies of its own CEO.
Unless something radically changes, either in tone, leadership or strategy – Tesla risks cementing its decline on a market which once held its greatest promise.
