![Tesla owner Tim McCarthy: 'I would consider buying from them [Tesla] again further down the line if he [Elon Musk] wasn’t there. Definitely.' Photograph: Nick Bradshaw](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/YNCGUXEYBZDXJMCTWNCQZO2YCE.JPG?auth=cb80718fd19078e9d1c3d5443410a79a46759179287004ea11f53d43ce5d076a&smart=true&width=1024&height=682)
Ever since Elon Musk endorsed US president Donald Trump and gave a controversial salute at an inauguration event, the fortunes of the Tesla electric car company he owns have taken a dramatic turn. Musk’s political support for Trump, and his subsequent running of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in the US has been at best divisive, and has certainly stirred some into their own political actions.
In most markets, Tesla sales have fallen dramatically, and the latest figures show that across Europe, sales of the Model Y SUV – not long ago the Continent’s bestselling car – have fallen by 53 per cent since the start of the year. Not only is that car no longer a top-seller, it’s not even in the top 30 any more.
There may be extenuating circumstances for that fall in sales, but what have Irish Tesla owners been feeling since Musk undertook his political lurch to the right?
‘I’m worried about the resale value now’
Tim McCarthy, from Co Dublin, is a Tesla Model Y owner who bought his car in 2023. “When I bought it, there was a bit of reluctance, because of Mr Musk. We had looked at other cars, such as the Volkswagen ID.4 and the Skoda Enyaq, but eventually we bought this because it just suited us in certain ways. And I like the car, the ride is a bit firm, but the build quality is good, it works for me in terms of space, and when we had one problem with it – a tow bar issue – that was sorted quickly,” he says.
McCarthy’s strictly-vehicular experience has been good, but Musk’s recent actions have created disquieting background noise. “I would be worried about the resale value now, and that might actually encourage me to hold on to the car for longer. I think it’s a very fluid situation, and you’re aware of where things are going around the world with Tesla, but it’s a very fluid situation, and who knows? I might be stuck with it…”
If it weren’t for Musk, McCarthy would be happy to buy another Tesla. “I think it’s a good company in general, in terms of innovation, software, customers’ backup, and the Supercharging network. So I’ve no issues with the company. It’s just him. I would consider buying from them again further down the line if he wasn’t there. Definitely.”
‘I’m hoping to pick up a bargain’
One person who says that Musk’s political stance has actually inspired him to consider buying a Tesla is Lewis Duffy, who lives in Dublin and currently drives a BMW 330e plug-in hybrid. “With all the news surrounding Tesla, I’m hoping to pick up a bargain as a result,” he says.
Duffy says he “absolutely” regards himself as a Musk supporter and hopes that his political influence might spread to this side of the Atlantic. “Just in terms of government efficiency, I feel that there’s so much bureaucracy in the Civil Service that we could save billions.” When we asked if he would be concerned that any Tesla he buys might be vandalised, Duffy responded: “Let them try.”
‘I wasn’t a big admirer of Musk, but I was a big admirer of Tesla’
Mick, who lives in the southeast of the country, and asked that his surname not be used, takes a different approach. “I wasn’t a big admirer of Musk in the past, but I was a big admirer of Tesla,” he says. “As a company, as a technological innovator – fantastic. I sort of had my doubts about Musk himself during the pandemic, when he was telling people to get back into the office.”
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Despite this, Mick bought a Tesla Model 3 saloon in September 2022. In normal circumstances, he’d currently be thinking about trading it in later this year. However, these are not normal circumstances. “I think at this point, I’m just going to have to hold on to it for as long as I can. The trade-in value was already trashed by the price cuts the company made in late 2022. And I can see how that made sense for Tesla — if they have reduced the cost to the point where they can sell it for less and still make a profit, and the mission is be competitive and get people to buy these cars rather than fossil-fuel cars, well I could see it from that point of view and just sort of suck it up.”
Given the recent spate of vandalism attacks against Tesla cars, dealerships and chargers, is Mick worried about his car suffering similar damage? “I doubt that very much,” he says. “I think the worst that might happen is that someone might ‘key’ it, but then that could happen anyway, so I don’t have much fear of that. I think most people are reasonable, and they don’t think that I went out and bought the car because of a certain salute gesture. But I think I’m going to have to live with the fact that I’m either stuck with it, or I have to take a big financial hit. I might be well-off enough to afford to buy a Tesla, but I don’t make enough to sell it at a loss…”
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It’s a curious situation for car buyers to be in, when politics and culture wars intrude into traditionally simpler questions of consumer value and car purchasing. In general, Irish car buyers have shown themselves relatively immune to broader political issues when it comes to their motoring choices – the “Dieselgate” scandal certainly cost Volkswagen some buyers, but it remains a big-selling brand here. Likewise, Toyota’s unintended acceleration scandal didn’t do the brand much damage in Irish customers’ eyes – it has been and still is the top-selling car brand in the country.
Irish sales of Teslas have fallen this year, but to a far smaller degree than they have in the rest of Europe. Irish Tesla sales are down 6.1 per cent compared with the first two months of 2024, but there’s devil in that detail. Sales of the Model Y SUV, at one point the biggest-selling car in the world, have fallen by 53 per cent in Ireland, but that is potentially less likely due to attitudes to Musk, and more likely due to the fact that a new, potentially improved, Model Y has just been launched, but is yet to actually land on Irish shores. The Model 3 saloon, updated last year, has seen a 28 per cent increase in Irish sales.
In the US, Ed Niedermeyer is one of Tesla and Musk’s staunchest critics. A former senior editor at The Drive, he’s also the author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story Of Tesla Motors, published in 2019. Niedermeyer has some skin in this game – he’s a leading light in the recently-emerged #TeslaTakedown, a movement with the stated aim of damaging Musk economically by protesting the sales of his cars.
Asked if the current sales slump at Tesla is a blip, or something far more serious for the company, Niedermeyer says: “Like everything about the future, it kind of depends on us, right?”
“What I’ve been trying to communicate to people is that if taken seriously, Tesla is an immensely powerful lever that the public has to exert some influence over the political situation, at least with regards to Elon Musk. That there’s sort of fundamental vulnerabilities. That while he seems invulnerable, you look at the wealth.
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“And sort of like the Death Star, there’s that thermal exhaust port that is a very fundamental weakness. There’s no guarantee that that we’ll be able to blow up the Death Star, so to speak, but the opportunity certainly exists. I want to make people aware of that so they understand the options around the table.”
Is it actually possible to topple one of the world’s most powerful and influential people in such a manner, though? Niedermeyer certainly thinks so: “The first thing to recognise is that Elon Musk was not elected, that we as a body politic have not had a say in the power that he now wields. And so the question is, what can we do about it?
“And my argument is that this is the only real opportunity that we have to exert meaningful influence on the situation between now and the next election. Even in the next election, he wasn’t elected, so the idea that the political system is going to be the way to remove him is not, I think, any more clear than the opportunity that this opportunity presents.
“And while that’s uncertain, there’s an ‘X-factor’ to the extent to which people buy in and collective action is able to take place at real scale. But what I know is that if that scale of rejection of selling Teslas, divesting from the stock, of boycotting future sales, boycotting service revenue, boycotting charging revenue, if that all happens at scale, combined with the other trends in Tesla’s business and the fundamental instability of the stock valuation, and the sort of triggers that are built into that, that could fuel a downward spiral.”
However, there remains the question of how much of the downward trend in Tesla sales and value is due to protest, and how much is merely a blip as the company refreshes an ageing model line-up.
Matthias Schmidt is the chief European auto market analyst at Schmidt Automotive Research, based in Germany, where taxi drivers are reporting growing resistance among customers to accept a trip in a Tesla. Musk’s backing of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of last month’s federal election infuriated many Germans.
Schmidt says: “Tesla’s regional registrations trend has been downward, even prior to the Trump/AfD contagion. We see the withdrawal of purchase subsidies for EVs in many key European markets having a big negative impact, which was priced into Tesla’s business model and is now absent.
“Being a pure-player EV company, Tesla was most exposed to this. The ageing and limited model line-up is also impacting them, and alongside that, the market for first-time adopters who were drawn to new brands such as Tesla is likely seeing some market saturation as incumbents increasingly bring new EV models to market to reach sharpening regulatory emission levels. The imminent introduction of the Model Y refresh could also be causing some purchasing decisions to be delayed, impacting January even harder while the baseline last year was slightly inflated thanks to the Model 3 refresh rollout. EU anti-subsidy tariffs may be having a small impact but Tesla has the least exposure here due to it facing the lowest rate of all manufacturers exporting BEV models from China to the EU, and it impacts the Model 3 only.”
However, Schmidt did say there is some underlying protest movement effect. “In highly emotional Germany, we are seeing increasing anecdotal evidence – such as bumper stickers – of a consumer shift due to the toxic fallout from the AfD comments as consumers vote with their feet and look for, shall we say, Alternatives Für Tesla.”
