About Bertel Schmitt

After a 40 year hiatus, spent doing propaganda in the automotive industry around the world, Bertel returns as a journalist and to the roots of his initials. His wife is a late model Japanese Import.

Friday Morning Auto News, May 16, 2025: “White genocide” blamed on rogue employee. Toyota releases new EV. Jaguar’s re-rebrand. More.

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Thursday Morning Auto News, May 15, 2025: Musk needs options. Nissan urges faster trade talks. Geely profits triple on record sales. Musk’s Grok hallucinates about “white genocide.” More.

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Wednesday Morning Auto News, May 14, 2025: Waymo recalls 1,200. Baidu robotaxis coming to EU. Tesla shipping Chinese parts again. More.

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Tuesday Morning Auto News, May 13, 2025: Rare earth magnets released. EV credit imperiled. Nissan in crisis, closes 7 of 17 plants. More.

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Monday Morning Auto News, May 12, 2025: Strike at Ford Germany. Polestar narrows loss. Nissan cuts 20,000. More.

Monday Morning Auto News, Aug 05, 2024

 

Friday Morning Auto News, May 09, 2025: ‘Musk has destroyed the brand.’ Nissan ditches plan for EV battery plant. U.S. carmakers against U.K. deal. More.

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Germany BEV Monthly: Tesla kaputt.

Can you spot the Tesla on the chart of April BEV registrations in Germany? Read the fine print: Tesla managed to sell all but 885 units in Europe’s largest auto market, that’s nearly half of what Tesla moved in April 2024. What’s worse (and mostly overlooked in the media) Tesla’s Jan-April Germany sales are down a whopping 60.4%, pulling the rug from under the usual argument that Tesla’s first month of the quarter usually sucks: All four months of German Tesla sales sucked big. Also, those pent-up registrations of the refreshed Model Y, predicted as the antidote for flagging sales, don’t seem to be happening.

Are Tesla’s sales down because Germans have turned BEV-averse? The opposite is true: German BEV registrations rose a massive 53.5% YOY, reports Germany’s regulator Kraftfahrt Bundesamt. A rising tide should lift all boats, except when they are under water. Tesla, a company operating an alleged “gigafactory” outside of Berlin, has been out-BEVed  by most “legacy” OEMs, even by China imports of BYD and SAIC. And it’s not just Germany turning on Tesla. Tesla sales have gone miserable all over Europe. Even in Tesla’s adopted home-market China, “Tesla’s China-made electric vehicle sales fell 6% in April from a year earlier, extending declines for a seventh month, as the U.S. automaker grapples with intense competition from its Chinese rivals and a tarnished image in Europe,” Reuters writes.

Gone are the days when Tesla fans were proud of their best-selling Model Y. Now in Germany, 9 out of the Top 10 best-selling BEVs are Volkswagen Group models, led by the Volkswagen ID.7, the ID.3, and the ID.4/ID.5.  Sure, the Y still is Tesla’s best-selling model,  but it sold only 639 units out of a Tesla-total of 885. All hopes of Tesla fans were pinned on the Model Y, but it is not a sales-savior, it is a bust. On the German April BEV best-seller charts, the Y landed on Rank 25 (!!!!) behind such famous BEV brands as the electric Fiat 500, the Hyundai INSTER, and the battery-operated Opel Corsa.

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Thursday Morning Auto News, May 08, 2025. Tesla’s Robotaxi trademark refused – too generic. Fed waits to see how trade war shakes out. Toyota forecasts 35% profit drop. More.

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