You drive too fast, you don't slow down at the turn, and your car loses traction and veers off the road and into the surrounding landscape. For the moment, Elon Musk, like the rest of the new American administration, is drifting as he drives along. When will he run off the road? A few warning lights are starting to flash on the dashboard.

One first signal, albeit a weak one, was that Tesla car sales in Germany collapsed by 59% in January. The company sold half as many cars as it had in January 2024, amid an electric car market that had, for its part, bounced back up by 54%. Of course, one month isn't enough for a trend, and the Berlin plant has slowed down production due to a long-awaited model changeover. Yet the American's drift can also be seen elsewhere: Sales were down 63% in France, and 12% in the United Kingdom.

At issue were Musk's scurrilous outbursts and his vocal support for Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party and its leader, Alice Weidel. This interference has been received with all the more dismay in Germany as it came shortly before the anniversary of the discovery of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and showed support for a party riddled with Nazi sympathizers, which had, moreover, been opposed to the establishment of the Berlin Tesla factory and hates renewable energies.

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