Electric vehicles are the future, we’ve been told. In Germany, they seem on the way out. According to data released by German’s regulator Kraftfahrt Bundesamt KBA, 2024 BEV registrations were down 27.4%, while registrations of hybrids grew 12.7%. All passenger vehicles were down 7.1%.
What also did not happen was the predicted disruption of the legacy automakers. Germany’s age-old OEMs are pretty much alive. In fact, they beat upstart Tesla at its own game. More than 1/3 of all BEVs registered in Germany in 2024 were made by the Volkswagen Group, followed by BMW, and world’s oldest automaker Daimler. Germany’s BEVs are dominated by the dinosaur OEMs, and they are eating Tesla’s BEV market share that dropped below 10%.
Tesla didn’t do too well in 2024. Its 2024 Germany registrations dropped by a painful 41%. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk should have cared more about marketing his products, and less about wading into Germany politics, which he obviously does not understand. Much to the shock of Germany’s liberal-leaning Tesla owners, Musk threw his weight behind the rightwing radical AFD party, a political outcast in Germany that is under observation of Germany’s secret service, the Verfassungsschutz. To make matters worse, the AFD is opposed to BEVs, but they’ll happily take Musk’s money.
Musk’s recent tirades against European politics and insults of Europeans politicians is not sitting too well on this side of the Atlantic, and it is often noted that oppressive regimes in China and Russia are spared Musk’s free-flowing vitriol. Day by day, Musk is bumbling deeper into Europe’s political minefields.
