Sad Tesla Owners Try To Escape Elon's Taint
I really like not having to know anything about the politics of the Hyundai/Kia group.
Once upon a time, all of seven years ago, Elon Musk was just a weird, mostly apolitical multibillionaire who would occasionally make news with a stunt like launching his own car into space (with “DON'T PANIC” in large, friendly letters on the dashboard screen) mostly for the hell of it, to test his rocket company’s new heavy launch vehicle. At the time (February 2018), most of us didn’t yet know how awful Tesla’s labor practices were; the big Center for Investigative Reporting story that opened a lot of our eyes came just two months later, revealing that Tesla covered up workers’ injuries to make its safety reports show improvements that weren’t really happening.
Gosh, sounds like a model for downplaying a pandemic, doesn’t it?
Our point here is that Musk has always wanted to be identified with his businesses, and the other way around, which is why his increasingly creepy fascist tendencies were reflected in how he made Twitter a toxic Nazi wasteland. And now that he’s playing a central role in the dismantling of American democracy (with about as much transparency as the injury reports in his factories), it’s hardly surprising that lots of people who bought Tesla cars in the past are now trying to unload them, even selling them at a loss greater than the usual depreciation typical for used EVs in the current market. This is one of the downsides of a cult of personality, especially when the personality is of the narcissistic sociopathic sort.
Hey, this seems like a good place to mention that in an interview with podcaster/presidentmaker Joe Rogan this week, Musk fretted that empathy would be the Death of Western Civilization. (Turns out punk rock only caused the decline.)
As Musk keeps enshittifying America, the New York Times this week profiled several disillusioned Tesla owners (gift link) who liked their cars just fine, but can no longer stomach being associated with the CEO of the company that built them. There’s Jennifer Trebb, a nice family therapist and Democrat in Ohio who loved her futuristic Model Y but recently traded it in on a gas-powered Mercedes, a decision that she’d been leaning toward for a while but which was made definite when she went to her local supermarket:
“Two weeks ago, I was called a Nazi,” she said, “in the parking lot at Kroger,” adding an expletive. “I came home and told my husband, ‘That’s it. I’m done.’”
Some taints are too nasty even to be offset by a “I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE ELON WENT CRAZY” bumper sticker — which features prominently in a photo of Trebb’s car.
Also, thanks to the miracle of online ads, as we wrote about the Times article, we saw a steady stream of ads for Polestar, the luxury EV brand jointly owned by Volvo and the Chinese automaker Geely; the US version is built at a factory in South Carolina to avoid US tariffs on Chinese EVs. As it happens, the Times story includes a British writer and director, Paul Unwin, who happily paid a fairly hefty fee to get out of his lease on a Tesla Model Y a year early, replacing it with a Polestar 3. His neighbors congratulated him on the choice:
“People said, ‘I’m glad you got rid of that car,’” Mr. Unwin said, adding that he did not regret paying to get out of his lease. “I would have paid twice that.”
Alex Cole-Hamilton, a member of Scottish Parliament and of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, declared on social media in February that he had also sold his Tesla of five years.
Make no doubt about it: Tesla is suffering, as we’ve been reporting for some time now, even as overall EV sales in the US are improving. A good chunk of that is because the company hasn’t introduced a new model in years, but Musk’s personal shittiness is having an effect, too.
Shares of Tesla dropped about 13 percent during the last week of February, further bringing the company’s market value under $1 trillion. The shares closed at $284.65 on Monday, the lowest since Nov. 5, Election Day. That was down more than 40 percent from a peak of $479.86 at the close on Dec. 17.
Tesla sales in Europe have dropped sharply since Musk’s was-that-a-Hitler-salute-it-sure-was stunt January 20. Germany saw a particularly sharp dropoff — sales down 76 percent in February, compared to last year — possibly because people there know exactly what a Nazi salute looks like, and what a salute to the political ambitions of modern neo-Nazis there looks like, too. Turns out that Musk’s call for far-Right Germans to let go of their “focus on past guilt” didn’t go over so hot in the car market — and Germany is Europe’s biggest market for EVs.
And in Norway, which is on track to reach its goal of no longer selling new internal-combustion cars this year, Tesla sales are also down by 50 percent from last year. EVs from other manufacturers are so common now that Tesla makes up just 8.8 percent of the Norwegian market “down from 20 percent in 2023.” Again, that’s thanks largely to the popularity of EVs overall, but people who are sick of Musk’s face have a lot of other options these days, especially outside the US and Europe, where Chinese EVs are selling like highly efficient hotcakes.
Here in the US, protesters have been demonstrating in large numbers at Tesla dealerships and Supercharger fast-charging stations. On Monday, several Supercharger units at a station in Littleton, Colorado, went up in flames, too, and a $5,000 reward is being offered in what many are assuming was a political arson. No, Yr Wonkette does not endorse arson, not out of any love for private property, but because fires are a bad idea generally, especially when you add high voltage into the mix. Somebody could get hurt, and it won’t be Elon Musk.
Oh, hey, one alleged form of Tesla Shaming that doesn’t seem to be widespread, even if you see posts about it on social media: While it’s true that there have been a few instances of people putting the badges and nameplates of other brands of cars on their Teslas — either for the lulz or potentially to ward off vandals — many of the pictures circulating on social media predate Elon’s latest foray into the rightwing fever swamps, like this lovely “Audi” Model 3 that’s actually from May 2023. Maybe it was a reaction to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, but definitely pre-DOGE. If you wanna see more, I did a thread on Bluesky about ‘em.
On the whole, I’m really glad I leased a Kia EV6. (You didn’t think I’d get through this article without mentioning that, did you?) I like not having to know beans about the political opinions of the executives at the Hyundai Motor Group; I assume they’re all ruthless capitalist bastards but they stay within the law. And while I think it’s kind of neat that Kia sent me a free charge-port adapter that will allow me to charge up using the Supercharger network later this year, I’m happy to wait to see if Tesla stockholders force Elon out. He’s bad for business.
[NYT (gift link) / NYT (not a gift link) / CNN / Ars Technica]
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>> Sad Tesla Owners Try To Escape Elon's Taint <<
Best Wonkette headline ever.
My neighbors sold their Tesla and bought a Volkswagen because they want a car that isn't as widely associated with Nazis.