Tesla sales drop for fifth month in a row in Europe

And they never should be nor should anyone be forgiven for offering one up now. Whether joking or not, it’s not acceptable.

> I don't think that Americans (or South Africans) really understand the scars that the Nazis left in Europe.

Left-leaning and centrist Americans at least were similarly horrified, so I don't think it's an issue of understanding in the US. Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.

Also note that it's not just Europe where sales have dropped, Tesla EV market share has fallen quite hard in the US as well IIRC.

Then how did VW survive?

Some Americans certainly understand. Sadly (or maybe thankfully?) a lot of them have passed on. My grandfather was in France and Germany and was so scarred by what he experienced there that he never spoke of it once to any of his 6 children or 16 grandchildren and he was a fantastic story teller. I shudder to think how he would feel about what's happened in America recently. The Europe that he risked his life for and his friends that he watched die ... all that sacrifice and good will has been discarded in a few months.

I don’t have an answer to that, but I grew up with plenty of Americans, some of whom might even have fought in WWII, who wouldn’t buy a VW for the obvious reasons.

> Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.

That reason is his breeder fetish/ideology. By the tabloid press he's paid for IVF gender selection for boys, and Vivian rejecting that, defying her father's wish and coming out as trans is what sent him off on the anti-woke crusade. And that's also why he bought and ruined Twitter - in his view, it was the woke people on there who ruined his "son".

It's all so damn petty, the actions of a man so rich he didn't think someone would ever tell him the word "no" and follow through with it. So much completely unnecessary suffering, all for the pure vanity of a single man.

It didn't, in any meaningful way. Certainly the legal entity didn't; I suppose a trademark and some IP did.