Due to the “incompatibility between the statements of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the values that Tesla represents with its products,” the drugstore chain Rossmann will avoid Tesla when making purchases for its fleet in the future.
This should not surprise anyone – especially not CEO Elon Musk. But he will probably only understand the damage he is causing with his sometimes politically radical messages and his open support of Donald Trump later – if at all. star As I already wrote, more and more former customers and fans are turning away from Tesla. The drugstore chain Rossmann, a fleet customer that had purchased vehicles from the brand for its fleet in the past, is now doing the same. In a drastic press release, the company announced that it would no longer be purchasing any more Tesla models in the future.
“Elon Musk makes no secret of his support for Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly described climate change as a hoax – this attitude is in stark contrast to Tesla’s mission to contribute to environmental protection through the production of electric cars,” Raoul Roßmann, spokesman for the management, is quoted as saying in the chain’s letter.
Although the company will not immediately sell all Tesla vehicles, as the US car rental company Hertz has done, it will only consider “alternative manufacturers and models” in the future. Rossmann told the star When asked, Rossmann said that there are currently 34 Teslas in the fleet. In total, there are around 800 cars. Rossmann did not quantify the financial damage Tesla would suffer as a result of any planned new purchases that will now be made elsewhere.
Elon Musk’s political stance has “far-reaching consequences”
A Rossmann spokeswoman explains: “We are aware that we are not big buyers. But we are using our opportunities to position ourselves with a clear stance: The big lever for opposing climate change lies with politics. Because only with the help of sensible politics and legislation can sustainable and effective changes be initiated. A very good example is the methane regulation passed in 2024, in which the EU requires oil and gas companies to regularly inspect their plants to identify and repair methane leaks, since around a third of current global warming is due to avoidable methane emissions, including from gas and oil production. If a CEO like Elon Musk supports a presidential candidate like Donald Trump, who dismisses climate change as a ‘hoax’, this has far-reaching consequences.”
With Rossmann’s decision, Tesla is losing another corporate customer that is very important for the sale of vehicles in large quantities. Apart from that, it is of course damaging to the image of a car manufacturer when other companies publicly declare that they want to avoid it.
The German car rental company Sixt and the US rental company Hertz are also no longer working with Tesla. Although this has no ideological background, it is also causing a hole in the car manufacturer’s order books (read more here).
More and more people are avoiding Tesla because of Musk – not because of the cars
Resistance against the company boss is growing on social media. With every post on his platform X, formerly Twitter, against US politicians, every fake video, every conspiracy theory shared and every attack on his daughter Vivan Jenna Wilson, he is losing potential customers who should not provide him with any more funds for his alleged fundraising campaigns for US presidential candidate Donald Trump.
This is devastating for Tesla, because the cars – apart from the Cybertruck – are actually very solid and consistently suitable for everyday use, which have long had a technological lead and have attracted many fans. This has not changed. But Musk was already the company’s figurehead years ago – and now his fame is having a predominantly negative impact.
It was only at the end of July that the company published a sobering balance sheet for the second quarter of 2024. According to this, Tesla made a profit of 1.48 billion US dollars on sales of 25.5 billion US dollars, but had to accept a 45 percent drop in profits. Musk tried to alleviate investors’ bad mood with promises – he promised that in the future the money would be made with self-driving cars and humanoid robots, not with vehicles for end users. He may not have much time left.
