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Europe's EV sales surge 26% in 2025 while Tesla faces decline

(www.notebookcheck.net)
65 points doener | 2 comments | 23 Sep 25 10:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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rmu09 ◴[23 Sep 25 11:57 UTC] No.45345721[source]▶
US made cars had the reputation of being low quality, too big, too heavy and too inefficient for european cities.

Tesla was somewhat different. People bought Teslas not for their promised "self driving" capabilities (I know no Tesla driver that took those promises at face value or got the FSD option FWIW), but one motivation was to "stick it" to snobbish arrogant european manufacturers wanting to develop "clean" ICEs with "green fuels" or other non-sensical crimes against thermodynamics like H2-cars.

Now, Tesla (and the US in general) has a brand toxicity problem, and it is worsening. People I know that would consider a Tesla some years ago now drive electric VWs or BWMs or KIAs, often times much more expensive cars than the comparable Tesla 3 / Y model.

This trend will probably continue the next years, and I don't see a way for Tesla to repair the brand image.

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1. storus ◴[23 Sep 25 12:13 UTC] No.45345901[source]▶
I think it's more like that before only Tesla had working lane following system on highways that allowed one to do mostly hands-free driving during long drives but nowadays even the cheapest KIA has it working well so no need to spend extra money on Tesla. I know working-class EU folks driving Teslas who couldn't care less about any perceived toxicity of the brand typical for German green party voting snobs.
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2. rmu09 ◴[23 Sep 25 13:02 UTC] No.45346453[source]▶
Individual owners may care about brand toxicity or may not, but it affects how much tesla can charge for new vehicles and resale value of used ones. Of course this analysis is just MHO, maybe the real cause why EV market is expanding and Tesla is stagnating is something completely different, like missing "android auto" resp. apple equivalent thing functionality.