Elon Musk’s support for far-right politics hurt Tesla’s image in Europe.
Tesla ended 2025 with a full-on collapse in several of Europe’s biggest car markets, according to data from France’s national auto association and other regional registries.
Tesla delivered 1,942 vehicles in France in December, a 66% crash from the same time last year. In Sweden, December turned into a total flop, with Tesla’s deliveries falling 71%. The full-year figure didn’t do any damage control either, 67% lower than 2024.
Even with electric vehicles becoming more popular across the continent, Tesla couldn’t keep up.While the rest of the battery-powered car industry enjoyed a 27% growth in registrations during the first eleven months, Tesla’s total registrations during that same stretch tanked 28%.
Only Norway stuck with the brand. The country recorded 5,679 new Tesla registrations in December, nearly 90% higher than the previous year. It’s no surprise, 96% of new cars sold in Norway last year were fully electric.
Sales didn’t just fall because of car prices or competitors. There was also the Elon Musk factor. Across Germany and the UK, Tesla faced a wave of customer pushback after Musk openly backed far-right political figures.
That didn’t help brand loyalty. Some buyers looked elsewhere.
Elon hasn’t backed down though. He’s still betting hard on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature, known as FSD, to drive future sales in Europe.
But that plan has one big problem, it’s not legal there yet. European regulators haven’t approved it, and Tesla is now clashing with the exact agency it needs a greenlight from.
RDW, the Dutch authority that handles vehicle approvals for the EU, is supposed to be the company’s “main path” to clearance, according to a post by Tesla on Musk’s X platform. The post claimed RDW “has committed to granting Netherlands National approval in February 2026.” That statement didn’t land well.
The very next day, RDW said that was false. “We do not share details about ongoing applications from manufacturers,” the agency said in a public statement.
“Both RDW and Tesla are aware of the efforts needed to reach a decision on this matter in February. Whether this timeline will be met is yet to be determined in the coming period.”
Elon isn’t sitting quietly about the delay. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting earlier this month, he told investors, “Pressure from our customers in Europe to push the regulators to approve would be appreciated.”
That speech came right before the company quietly updated its website with new FSD safety data, data that has already been called out by critics for weak comparisons and flawed methods.
After the meeting, Tesla’s Europe team posted a link to RDW’s contact page, asking supporters to thank the agency for supposedly greenlighting the system. The regulator did not take that well. A statement went up on RDW’s site the following day, saying:
“We thank everyone who has already done so, but would like to urge people not to contact us about this matter. It takes up unnecessary time for our customer service. Furthermore, this will have no impact whatsoever on whether or not the schedule will be met.”
Back on the numbers side, analysts expect Tesla to report an 11% drop in global deliveries for the fourth quarter. Tesla, clearly bracing for worse, put out its own estimate suggesting that drop might actually be closer to 15%.
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