Summary
Tesla’s EU vehicle sales dropped 49% in January and February 2025, with registrations falling to 19,046.
Analysts link the decline to Elon Musk’s political alignment with Trump and nationalist European parties, sparking backlash, including arson and vandalism at Tesla facilities.
Compounding issues, newer Chinese-made EVs are surpassing Tesla sales in Europe, with Tesla’s market share falling from 18.4% to 7.7% year-to-date.
People have disassociated the idea of buying stock as support for a company–they just treat it like a game. Not to mention all the amoral index fund managers who control most people’s investments.
Yea the real issue is that it’s in the indexes. Can’t not buy it in that case.
This is unfortunately not an option for everyone, but personally this is what I’m doing to reduce my exposure to Tesla via index funds.
I’m transferring mine to a group of non-US-specific indexes. The world indexes unfortunately still hold some Tesla, but the emerging markets ones sure don’t. In my previous retirement fund, a huge part was an S&P 500 index, but now there are no “US only” index funds. Also only one of the indexes is managed by a US company - previously there were a bunch of blackrock and vanguard funds in it. In case you’re wondering why I said “I’m transferring” and not “I transferred”, it’s because I can’t do it instantly. The application has been put in already though.
It’s not a huge amount of money (5 digits, I’m young, have only been working decent jobs for the last 6 years) and I don’t have full control of it since it’s in a pension system where the laws specify how much diversity there has to be, what the max fees can be, etc, and local banks run different funds you can switch between. I’m just doing what I can.
As for investments outside of this system, I’m thinking of buying some of this new Europe defense index ETF in addition to other interesting European and potentially Emerging Markets ETFs I might find. I think betting on Europe getting its shit together is a smart choice because if we don’t, we’re fucked anyway and if we do, I might as well make a small profit off it.