Musk's pre-election affair with AfD costs Tesla big bucks, its EV sales in Germany drop 76% YoY

Tesla sales in Germany recorded another drop last month, official data showed Wednesday, after billionaire owner Elon Musk vocally backed the far-right AfD during the country’s recent election campaign.

Just 1,429 of the US group’s electric vehicles were registered in Europe’s biggest auto market in February, down over 76 percent year-on-year, the KBA federal transport authority said.

Sales of Teslas had already plunged by almost 60 per cent in January after Musk’s intervention in German politics. Over the first two months of 2025 the group’s sales in Germany were down 70 per cent.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) recorded a historic result in national elections on February 23, securing almost 21 per cent of the vote.

The AfD was boosted by the vocal support of Musk, who used his social media platform X to say that only the far-right party could “save Germany”.

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Despite its strong showing at the polls, the AfD is shunned by the other parties in Germany’s parliament, who refuse to work together with the far right with an eye to Germany’s past.

Electric vehicle sales in Germany have suffered over the past year after the government withdrew a key subsidy programme and European demand for battery vehicles waned.

The continued fall in sales of Teslas however contrasted with a recovery in the broader electric vehicles sector.

In February, a total of around 36,000 battery-powered vehicles were registered in Germany, around 31 percent more than in the same month last year.

Overall, the number of new vehicle registrations fell to some 203,400, down 6.4 percent on the previous month.