Tesla finished dead last out of 30 German companies in the "Reputation&Trust 2025" study with a score of 2.48 on a five-point scale — a result the Finnish pollster classifies as "very bad."

The fall from 3.25 a year earlier is a 0.77-point single-year drop, the largest single-year decline Reputation and Trust Analytics has logged in 12 years of cross-market tracking. For comparison, Meta, which had its own rough year, lost 0.28 points and still landed at 2.95.

What does the ranking actually show?

The 2025 score placed Tesla below brands with already-toxic reputations. Chinese e-commerce player Temu scored 2.76. Deutsche Bahn, Germany's much-maligned national rail operator, scored 2.68. Nestlé, the consumer-goods giant with a long trail of controversies, scored 2.56. Fast-fashion retailer Shein came in at 2.51 — three-hundredths of a point ahead of Tesla.

The survey scores eight dimensions: governance, financial performance, leadership, innovation, dialogue, products & services, workplace, and responsibility. Tesla's strongest readings came in innovation, followed by financial performance and products & services. The worst were governance, working conditions, and corporate responsibility.

What's driving the collapse?

The pollster points directly at CEO Elon Musk's political activity as the trigger. Riku Ruokolahti, Development Director at Reputation and Trust Analytics, said:

"Part of Tesla's appeal was based on signaling: an individual could communicate being a sustainability pioneer by driving an electric car. When founder Elon Musk's behavior then appeared irresponsible, it undermined the image that Tesla was the choice of a sustainability pioneer. This is a textbook example of how quickly you can lose a reputation built on one leg."

In Germany specifically, two on-camera gestures widely interpreted as Nazi salutes in January 2025 sit atop the reputational damage list. Musk has also publicly backed Germany's far-right AfD party and voiced apparent agreement with a defense of Hitler's actions during the Holocaust — issues with particular gravity in the German market.

How does Germany stack up against the Nordics?

Germany is Tesla's worst market in the survey, but the Nordic picture is also grim. Tesla placed third-from-last in Sweden and Denmark, fourth-from-last in Finland, and fifth-from-last in Norway and Estonia.

Sweden charts the multi-year slide most starkly. Tesla scored 3.88 there in 2021, fell to 3.18 by 2023, 2.88 in 2024, and 2.43 in 2025. The Finnish firm partly attributes that to Tesla's prolonged standoff with Swedish union IF Metall, now in its third year of sympathy strikes.

What's the read for comms teams?

The numbers put hard data behind a debate that has long divided the trade: when a CEO's politics clash with the customer base, the cost shows up not in donations or op-eds but in brand equity — and it shows up fast.

Other 2025 and early-2026 signals from Germany pile on. A March 2025 poll found 94% of Germans would not buy a Tesla. The TÜV December 2025 reliability report ranked Model Y the least reliable car on the German market. Tesla cut 1,700 jobs at its Berlin gigafactory in January 2026.

Berlin management also staged an anti-union concert for gigafactory staff ahead of an IG Metall organizing vote. That single move almost certainly weighs on next year's "workplace" and "responsibility" scores.

Reputation and Trust Analytics has run cross-market reputation tracking since 2013. A score below 2.5 sits in the "very bad" band. None of the 30 German companies surveyed fell into that range — until Tesla did.