The ongoing conflict between Tesla and several Swedish unions has been impacting the company’s operations in the country over the last two years.
Metalworkers’ union IF Metall has maintained its demand that Tesla sign collective bargaining agreements covering wages, working hours, and pensions — standard practice for automotive companies operating in Sweden.
However, the Elon Musk-led company has found ways to work around the blockades.
A new service center is under construction, new Superchargers were installed and the company has recently renewed its contract to store vehicles at the Trelleborg port.
Trelleborg Port
Despite a blockade by the Transport Workers’ Union, Tesla cars are still being brought into Sweden via passenger ferries at Trelleborg port, as first reported by the local media outlet Dagens Arbete.
Tesla also signed an agreement with the municipal port company, allowing them to store vehicles on the port premises.
The agreement was extended in 2024, drawing criticism from both IF Metall and the political opposition in Trelleborg, but last year the port company’s CEO Malin Collin told Dagens Arbete that no new agreements were planned.
That decision has since been reversed, according to chairman of Transport and employee representative on the port company’s board Jörgen Wärja, who revealed Tesla is still operating at the port.
Documents reveal that the contract with Tesla is extended in six-month periods.
“The agreement has not been terminated. I suppose they want the income rather than an empty storage. I understand the reasoning, but I do not support it,” Wärja stated.
While noting that “of course, one should not disregard the money the port receives,” the representative said “it would have felt better if it had been done differently. The port shouldn’t have anything to do with Tesla at all, in our view.”
According to Wärja, if “the port provides them with a facility where they can finish the cars,” the situation becomes a moral issue of “whether you honor a conflict or not.”
“If you say that you support Transport’s sympathy actions against Tesla, then it becomes double standards,” he concluded.
Approached by the outlet, the port’s CEO Malin Collin refused to comment on the agreement, stating that “we do not go into details regarding any customer contracts.”
Collin added that they’ve “taken note of the Transport Workers’ Union’s decision regarding sympathy actions and, of course, comply with applicable legislation and the requirements placed on us as an employer.”
However, “we do not comment on the labor dispute itself but focus on running a safe and efficient port operation within the applicable framework,” the chief executive reiterated.
New Superchargers
The blockade also affects vehicle charging, as work to connect the charging stations to the power grid has been blocked for nearly two years.
Despite this, Tesla managed to open several new Supercharging stations last year in Malmö and Södertälje.
Workers from the grid owners Eon and the municipal company Telge Nät unsuccessfully tried to block the company’s operations.
Late last year, a new station opened in Arlandastad, without requiring a connection. The company used battery storage to activate eight (out of a previously agreed 40) charging points there.
The opening of the Arlandastad station was initially blocked by Sekos, leaving it completed but without power for over a year.
It is unclear how the battery is charged; however, according to car journalist Peter Esse, Tesla relies on a nearby company to supply electricity.
“It connects to a friend they may have an agreement with, maybe another charging site or an industrial facility. There are a bunch of other charging stations nearby,” he says.
Retired Activists
The latest supporters of the strike are a group of retired labor activists.
The group gathers every Monday outside Tesla’s workshop and offices in Upplands Väsby under the banner “Walks Against Strikebreaking.”
They are now placing yellow parking notices on the windshields of Teslas, urging owners to pressure the company to sign a collective agreement.
“You might think this doesn’t concern you, since you’re just driving a car. But it does, because we all have a responsibility for rules in Sweden,” the notice reads.
At Tesla’s showroom, the yellow notices are replaced with flyers containing information about the strike.
It is not the first case of pensioners against Tesla. Last June, Swedish pension fund AP7 announced that it had blacklisted and sold all its shares in the company, which was worth around 13 billion SEK (about $1.4 billion then).
“AP7 has decided to blacklist Tesla due to verified violations of labor rights in the United States,” the pension fund said in a statement.
Sales in Sweden
Between January 1 and 23, Tesla sold 228 vehicles in Sweden, according to data from the EU-EVs platform shown on Monday.
January is usually the slowest month for car sales in the auto industry. A year ago, the company had registered 394 vehicles in the full first month of 2025.
The company closed last year with 821 vehicles sold in December.
Tesla sold 7,252 electric vehicles in Sweden last year. The company’s registrations declined year over year in every month of 2025.
Compared to the total 21,894 vehicles of 2024, the company’s sales plunged by 66.8% (to just a third) year over year.
Lineup in Sweden
Tesla introduced the more affordable Model Y Standard in the market, which lowered the SUV’s starting price to SEK 499,900 ($55,840), and the Model 3 Standard, which is priced from SEK 449,900 ($50,250).
The refreshed iterations of the Model S and Model X are priced above SEK 1,200,000 and both include unlimited free Supercharging and Premium Connectivity.
Up until the end of 2025, Tesla offered a SEK 40,000 trade-in bonus and 0% financing on both the Model 3 and Model Y Premium Long Range (both AWD and RWD), plus the Performance version of the sedan.
These incentives were renewed for the new year.
