Elon Musk’s reply to Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius was four words long: “Just make good EVs!” According to AS.com, Musk posted it on X on August 11, 2025, after Källenius publicly criticised the EU’s 2035 rule on sales of new combustion-engine cars. The exchange is a sharp jab. It is not proof that Europe is failing at electrification, and the reporting available on it does not establish that claim.
What Musk said, and how much weight the report can carry
The only report of the post in the material reviewed for this article is an AS.com piece by Marta Tejedor, updated August 22, 2025. It gives the wording as “Just make good EVs!” and identifies Musk as Tesla’s chief executive at the time. We could not confirm the post itself or the surrounding thread from an independent copy, so the wording should be read as AS.com’s reproduction.
The line is also narrow. It names no policy, deadline, subsidy or sales figure. It is a comment on product quality from the chief executive of a company that sells electric cars, aimed at a rival who had just argued about policy. That tells readers something about the tone of the exchange, but not about the state of the European market.
What Källenius was reported to argue
AS.com reports that Källenius, who was also president of the European automobile manufacturers’ association ACEA at the time, called for two things: purchase incentives for electric cars, and lower electricity costs at charging stations. The report frames this as criticism of the EU’s combustion-car sales policy and its market transition, not as a product announcement.
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No verified verbatim statement from Källenius was available for this article. The positions above are AS.com’s paraphrase, so they should not be quoted as his exact words.
What Mercedes-Benz had already committed to
Mercedes-Benz Group AG set out its electrification plan in a strategy update dated July 22, 2021. Its strategy page states: “The transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles is feasible and already underway at Mercedes-Benz.” The plan included three commitments, each stated as intent at that date:
- Going all-electric by the end of the decade, “where market conditions allow.” The qualifier matters: the target was conditional from the start.
- From 2025, all newly launched vehicle architectures would be electric-only.
- Investment of more than €40 billion in battery-electric vehicles between 2022 and 2030.
These are plans from 2021, not a record of what Mercedes has delivered since. Readers should not treat them as evidence of current sales or of how the company performed against them.
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The counterargument: regulation as the driver
Transport & Environment, an environmental advocacy group, takes the opposite view. In a September 15, 2025 opinion piece, its author William Todts wrote that electric car sales by European manufacturers grew nearly 40% in the first half of 2025, and argued that EU CO2 regulation was spurring that progress. Todts also argued that Mercedes faced company-specific competitive challenges rather than a problem common to all European carmakers.
Two qualifications apply. The “nearly 40%” is T&E’s figure for European manufacturers’ electric car sales, not an official measure of total registrations across the market. And the piece is advocacy, so its conclusions are T&E’s, not independently verified findings.
Testing the “Europe’s struggle” claim
The headline treats Musk’s reply as evidence of a wider European problem. Separating the issues shows why the claim is harder to support than the exchange suggests. Four questions are involved, and the sources answer them differently.
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Product competitiveness
Musk’s point is that quality matters more than policy. That is a fair test, but none of the sources compares European and non-European electric cars on quality, range, price or reliability. The argument is therefore a claim about priorities, not a measured gap.
Affordability and incentives
Källenius’s reported call for purchase incentives is a request about buyer costs. The sources do not show whether incentives would change demand, or how they compare with other ways of lowering prices. A request for incentives is not, by itself, evidence that consumers are rejecting electric cars.
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Lower electricity prices at public chargers are a second, separate request in the reported remarks. Charging cost is one of several factors that affect running costs, and the sources do not quantify its effect on sales in any European market.
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Policy certainty versus flexibility
This is the real disagreement. Automakers and their trade body are reported to want room to adjust, while T&E argues that fixed rules create the investment signal that drives progress. Each side makes a reasonable point, and the available reporting does not settle which approach produces faster electrification.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where each claim stands
| Claim | Who makes it | Type of evidence | Status in this article |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Just make good EVs!” | Elon Musk, then Tesla CEO | Social media post, reproduced by AS.com (August 2025) | Wording as reported; post not independently checked |
| Calls for EV purchase incentives and lower charging electricity costs | Ola Källenius, Mercedes-Benz CEO and then ACEA president (as reported by AS.com) | Secondary report, paraphrased | Paraphrase only; no verified verbatim quote |
| All-electric by end of decade “where market conditions allow”; electric-only architectures from 2025; over €40 billion in BEV investment, 2022–2030 | Mercedes-Benz Group AG | Official corporate strategy statement dated July 22, 2021 | Conditional statements of intent as of 2021; not a record of delivery |
| European manufacturers’ electric car sales grew nearly 40% in H1 2025 | William Todts, Transport & Environment (opinion, September 15, 2025) | Advocacy figure | Attributed to T&E; not an official all-market statistic |
| EU CO2 rule for new cars from 2035 | European Union | Official regulation | Current text, exemptions and status not verified for this article; check the European Commission’s official pages |
What the exchange does and does not establish
The sources are dated 2021 to 2025, and the story itself is from August 2025. Electric car policy, prices and sales have moved since then, and this article does not describe the situation as of October 2026.
On the evidence available, the exchange shows a disagreement about whether rules or incentives should drive electrification, and whether Mercedes faced problems specific to its own strategy. It does not show that Europe is failing to transition to electric cars, and it does not settle whether current EU policy is working. Readers who want to judge that question should compare official sales data and the current text of EU rules against the positions described here.
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