AccoEvery other day, protests and incidents of hate are popping up in different cities across the US. More and more people are, in fact, pulling away from Tesla’s brand, saying they are not willing to buy the company’s EVs.
Although the reasons behind such protests are not entirely clear, the company’s CEO Elon Musk’s political dealings, particularly as the head of the Department of Government Spending (DOGE), are speculated to be behind them.
Additionally, falling sales and stock prices of the world’s most valuable automaker by market capitalisation have also stoken market fears, not just among customers but also among investors.
To gauge the effects of these incidents beyond the US, German publication T-Online published a poll, asking Germans – “Would you still buy a Tesla?” The results on March 11 showed that around 94% of the one lakh respondents said “Absolutely not”. On the other hand, only 3% of the participants said “Yes, no problem”.
The results of the poll were not entirely surprising. Musk’s gestures at US President Donald Trump’s post-election rally stoked a controvery after they were likened to a Nazi salute. Additionally, Musk also publicly supported a right-wing party in Germany.
Here comes the twist
But that was not the end of the poll. According to T-Online, just a week later, the results flipped. The number of participants skyrocketed nearly 370% from one lakh to over 4.67 lakh.
With this, the results of the poll changed too, with a surprising 70.1% of the respondents saying they would consider buying a Tesla. The proportion of people who selected “Absolutely not” fell to 29.2%.
What did T-Online find?
While the reasons behind the unexpected changes in the poll were initially unclear, the publication said that the number of views on the article and the number of survey respondents did not match.
T-Online then found through an internal initial research that 2.53 lakh, or 54%, of the total polled votes came from just two IP addresses based in the US.
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“This suggests that the survey may have been manipulated,” T-Online said.
It was also found that the links to the article and to the survey were shared “thousands of times” on X, a social media platform owned by Musk, and other social media networks.
On Tuesday, Musk himself shared the article with the flipped results. His post recorded 28 lakh views on X in just two hours. Following the post, the survey began witnessing several hundred users per minute.
After the results of the initial investigation, the survey was suspended by the publication and removed from relevant article over potential targeted and agenda-driven manipulation.
