Elon Musk has shared a survey that was clearly negative about Tesla last week, but it was made to look positive for Tesla after bots rigged the results.
Tesla’s sales dropped by 41% in Germany last year compared to 2023 despite EV sales surging 27% during the year.
Despite the already bad results in 2024, Tesla’s sales were down 70% in the first two months of 2025.
In 2024, the decline was attributed to tougher EV competition, but this year is even more brutal and different. The sharp decline is attributed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s rapidly losing credibility with Germans over his meddling in local elections and promoting the far-right AfD party.
Amid this evident crisis for Tesla in Germany, we reported last week on a survey of 100,000 people by Germany’s popular T-Online publication that showed that only 3% of respondents would consider buying a Tesla vehicle.
Our article on the survey went viral, with millions of views on X:
However, we were surprised yesterday when Musk himself shared the same survey, but with entirely different results.
Musk shared a post that claimed the survey now points to “70% of people in Germany would buy a Tesla again”:
This reversal of the results of the ongoing poll raised some red flags.
Sure enough, T Online has now reported that the survey has been manipulated by bots, with 253,000 votes coming from just two IP addresses in the US:
Where these votes—and the sudden reversal of opinion—came from was initially unclear. At first glance, the number of article views in recent days and the number of survey participants do not seem to match. Initial internal research now shows that 253,000 of the votes cast came from just two IP addresses in the US . This suggests that the survey may have been manipulated.
They shut down the survey after those findings were revealed.
Electrek’s Take
Well, this should help Tesla’s recovery in Germany: manipulating surveys to make it look like people actually would buy Tesla vehicles when they clearly don’t want to and are not buying them.
Top comment by Aigars Mahinovs
Sure, a survey becomes unrepresentative once it gets promoted by extremists on one side. That's why serious surveys only report their results after the end of the survey. And they do not publish their questions before selecting the respondents.
94% never buying a Tesla seems a bit much, but this is Germany. Knowledge about the relevant historical events is very good in Germany, especially among the very well educated middle class, who are the people that are actually well off enough to ever consider buying or leasing a new electric car.
That also correlates well with sub-10% AfD vote percentages in richer counties of Germany in contrast to the eastern Germany that is still significantly less well off and had worse education as part of soviet block and thus more susceptible to an AfD infection.
It was so obviously manipulated.
70% of people want to buy a Tesla, in particular, when most surveys show that EVs, in general, are not even at that level yet.
In addition, Tesla is having issues selling more than a thousand vehicles a month in Germany right now.
The desperation is palpable.
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