Germany is having the electric-car boom Tesla spent a decade arguing for. In the first half of 2026, close to one in four newly registered cars in the country had an electric motor. Tesla's share of that market is just under 2%.
A study by the market research firms Uranos of Hamburg and Dynata, carried out for Der Spiegel, surveyed 1,031 German Tesla owners and prospective electric-car buyers to work out why. Its answer is not about price, range or the charging network.
The gap
Tesla's German market share peaked at 2.6% in 2022, when the company sold close to 70,000 cars there. In the first half of 2026 it registered around 29,000 — in a market where electric demand is being actively subsidised and growing fast.
| Measure | 2022 | H1 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Tesla share of German new registrations | 2.6% | just under 2% |
| Tesla volume | ~70,000 (full year) | ~29,000 (half year) |
| BEV share of the German market | — | nearly 1 in 4 |
The share loss is modest in absolute terms. What makes it notable is the direction: it happened during the strongest run of German EV demand on record, alongside a purchase-grant programme that has driven applications far beyond forecasts.
What respondents actually said
Among those rejecting the brand, the reasons were specific and personal rather than product-related:
| Reason cited for rejecting Tesla | Share |
|---|---|
| Musk's political or controversial statements | 50% |
| Musk's public behaviour | 44% |
Supporters, by contrast, named innovation (56%), a general desire for an electric car (52%) and technological performance (43%). Across the whole sample, the reasons for going electric at all were environmental concern (51%) and running-cost advantages (49%).
The study's sharpest finding is about what predicts these attitudes. Political worldview shaped respondents' view of Tesla more strongly than either age or income — the two variables that normally dominate car-buying research. The pro-Tesla group skewed neoliberal; the rejecting group skewed left-progressive. Tesla, in other words, has become a political object in Germany in a way that no other car brand is. That tracks with the EU-wide picture from a separate July survey, which found Tesla ranked last of 28 car brands across all 27 member states on net favourability.
"Could be much higher"
Uranos co-founder Björn Welzel is direct about the cause. The Tesla brand, he says, "is no longer as strong as it was years ago," and the market share "could be much higher if he had not positioned himself politically in this way."
The reference is to Elon Musk's spell working for the Trump administration in 2025 and his repeatedly stated sympathy for the AfD — interventions in German domestic politics that landed in the same market where Tesla operates its only European car plant.
The read for owners and buyers
Two caveats are worth holding. This is stated buying intent, not observed behaviour, and respondents reliably overstate how principled their purchasing is. Tesla's German position also has other pressures on it — an ageing Model 3 and a wave of competitively priced European and Chinese rivals that did not exist in 2022.
But the mechanism the study describes is not one Tesla can engineer its way out of. A cheaper model, a better charging curve or a faster FSD rollout does not address a rejection rooted in what the CEO says. The practical consequence for German buyers is a market where Tesla keeps discounting to move metal — which, for anyone who has decided the politics do not govern their purchase, is not the worst place to be shopping from.