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

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65 points doener | 6 comments | 23 Sep 25 10:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source | bottom
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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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estearum ◴[23 Sep 25 12:02 UTC] No.45345771[source]▶
For what it's worth, Tesla is by a gigantic margin the lowest quality-for-dollar American vehicle you can buy. The EV thing was unique until it wasn't.
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potato3732842 ◴[23 Sep 25 12:08 UTC] No.45345837[source]▶
All the manufacturers are closer together in pretty much every attribute than car-illiterate internet fanboys and haters make it out to be.
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1. Gud ◴[23 Sep 25 12:41 UTC] No.45346215[source]▶
This is completely false. Tesla commanded a premium when it was the only long range EV in time, despite its crappy build quality.

Now everyone else has catched with equal drive trains but better build quality.

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2. potato3732842 ◴[23 Sep 25 13:36 UTC] No.45346856[source]▶
You're making my point for me.

Nobody cared that the build quality is "a little worse" all around because it doesn't meaningfully affect the vehicle's fitness for purpose like the internet comment sections will pretend it does.

As long as the vehicles were meaningfully different in other ways, those other ways were the dominating variables in the equation that make/break the purchase decision. Only when all else is within spitting distance of equal do Nth order variables like "muh door feel" and upholstery texture and speculative comments about reliability long after it's projected to replaced (gotta throw that one in there for the Toyota fanboys) start mattering....because they don't actually result in a seriously different ownership experience for the average user and the average user knows this.

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3. estearum ◴[23 Sep 25 13:46 UTC] No.45346973[source]▶
You actually said the opposite of that.

What you originally said is that there is little variance along any dimension.

What you're saying now is there is variance along different dimensions and different people care about different dimensions.

This is also what the original comment that you replied to said: build quality is bad (Dimension A), people were willing to accept it due to being an EV (Dimension B).

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4. potato3732842 ◴[23 Sep 25 17:29 UTC] No.45350227{3}[source]▶
My point is that "bad" build quality is basically a non-difference. It was never a problem, or it's a manufactured problem in people's minds. Sure, tesla is probably "worse" from a statistical perspective but the average buyer could never see this. You almost have to be looking to see it, and so you're not gonna see it unless all your other problems are solved.

Like if every OEM sets out to build a car of the same specs, they're gonna all be within spitting distance of each other. You'll have to scrape the bottom of the barrel (i.e. "muh build quality) to find differences.

Tesla was winning before because they were the only ones who set out to build a car of that nature, build quality was a non-issue because it simply isn't an issue. It only became a meaningful one after the fact when more cars of the same sort arrived on scene and people went looking for minutia.

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5. estearum ◴[23 Sep 25 19:15 UTC] No.45351468{4}[source]▶
I’m not arguing from a statistical perspective and nor are buyers using that.

When Tesla came out, its build quality was awful but it succeeded because people wanted EVs.

Now there are EVs that don’t feel like Mattel toys, and Tesla is doing very very badly, in part because its build quality is still very bad which is now a glaring problem in a more competitive field.

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6. apercu ◴[23 Sep 25 20:42 UTC] No.45352482{5}[source]▶
I agree pretty much with your entire thread, but if Elon was Warren Buffet people who think Tesla is a premium brand would still buy them. It wasn't the lies or the quality that turned people off, it's the cost, lack of customer support and - most impact-fully - that Elon is a whiney little man child and performs racist actions.