Picking a fight with the European labor unions was not a smart move in hindsight.
Backing AfD in Germany and calling them Germany's "best hope for the future" likely rubs the rest of the non-AfD polity the wrong way. He turned driving a Tesla into a political stance in Germany.
Indeed,"formerly" carries real weight. It's one thing to have car company with highly distributed ownership that was once Nazi aligned the better part of a century ago, and an entirely different thing to today have a personal piggy bank company for a billionaire Nazi active in global politics.
Picking a fight with the European labor unions was not a smart move in hindsight.
Backing AfD in Germany and calling them Germany's "best hope for the future" likely rubs the rest of the non-AfD polity the wrong way. He turned driving a Tesla into a political stance in Germany.
It is here in the US too. I drive on OG Model Y and silently judge new Model 3/Y purchasers. Trained to do so by the Cybertruck.
There's lots of support at 0
Wordy-Title: Tesla (TSLA) can’t find the bottom in Europe as 2026 starts with another brutal decline
> Across the wider region (EU, UK, EFTA), market share fell to 1.7% by November 2025
Tesla was never mainstream in Europe.
Canadians are starting to hate Tesla too. Why alienate liberal aligned people by acting like a fascist?
The popularity of the Volkswagen shows that Europe has no objection to (formerly) Nazi cars, but there are limits ...
I think people are missing the joke here (notice the italicised 'are').
Same for Ford in the US, right?
I once saw a Volkswagen with the vanity plate "FORD". A little concerning.
Indeed,"formerly" carries real weight. It's one thing to have car company with highly distributed ownership that was once Nazi aligned the better part of a century ago, and an entirely different thing to today have a personal piggy bank company for a billionaire Nazi active in global politics.
If a VW exec throws a Hitler salute in public, they will no longer have a job the next day.
When Musk does it, he gets a trillion-dollar pay package.
So no, there's no comparison to be drawn here.
Long ago Nazi vs currently another brainfart away from invading