The German toiletries chain Rossmann has announced that it will stop buying vehicles from Tesla in protest against Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump’s second presidential bid.

Rossmann will no longer buy Tesla vehicles

The toiletries, beauty and cleaning products chain Dirk Rossman GmbH has announced that it will no longer buy Tesla vehicles for its fleet, due to Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump. “The decision is based on the inconsistency between statements from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the value which Tesla represents with its products,” Rossmann announced in a press release.

The German company, founded by billionaire Dirk Roßmann in 1972, has a fleet of about 800 Tesla vehicles and buys 180 Tesla cars a year, according to Bloomberg. 

“Elon Musk makes no secret of the fact that he supports Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax - this position stands in gross contradiction to Tesla’s mission to protect the environment through the production of electric vehicles,” explained Rossmann CEO Raoul Roßmann.

Elon Musk’s attitude to climate change has been of growing concern on home turf since the billionaire opened his Tesla plant in Grünheide, Brandenburg, in 2021. While Brandenburg is abundant with lakes, the region is beset with a shortage of water and its fine soil means it is easy for pollutants to drain deeper and contaminate drinking water. 

Despite 76 percent of locals voting against a factory expansion proposed by Musk, local authorities recently gave the green light for developments, which will mean felling another 250 acres of local pine forest.

Rossmann has also faced criticism for climate protection inconsistencies

In recent years, Rossmann has sought to re-brand itself as a company committed to climate protection but has also come under fire for climate policy inconsistencies.

A 2023 joint investigation by Die Zeit and The Guardian found that the “climate neutral” label displayed on Rossmann’s own-brand products was unfounded and based on “questionable” certificates regulating CO2 removal, the process of actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere to offset unavoidable emissions.

“The “climate neutral” labels have been criticised for months,” Roßmann told Die Zeit. “So far, my attitude has been: as long as the climate protection projects behind them are not in question, we can deal with criticism of the labels. But now I ask myself: which customer still perceives this as added value?”

The Rossmann case is not an isolated one. Speaking to Clean Energy Wire in a 2022 interview, Susanne Spies of Germany's Federal Environment Agency (UBA) explained that it continues to be “virtually impossible to make truly "climate neutral" products in a modern economy, despite the rapid increase of such labels”.  

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