Tesla owners turn against Musk: ‘I’m embarrassed to drive around in this car’ | Elon Musk

ADespite joining Donald Trump and various far-right conspiracy theories, Elon Musk has left behind a horrified crowd of Tesla owners who are suddenly embarrassed by their own cars. Many of them are now publicly expressing their dismay at Musk on their vehicles.

Sales of anti-Musk stickers have been booming since the world’s richest man declared his support for Trump, helping him win the US presidential election, while owners of Teslas, the car brand led by Musk, are trying to distance themselves from the South African distance -born multi-billionaire.

“Sales have really skyrocketed. The day after the election was the biggest day ever,” said Matt Hiller, a Hawaii-based aquarium employee who sells a line of stickers denouncing Musk online. “People saw a billionaire supervillain buying his way into government, and that misled them.”

Hiller started the sticker range last year after he decided against buying a Tesla because Musk had “amplified terrible people and silenced others” on X, formerly Twitter, another of his companies. Several hundred stickers are now being sold per day, especially to Tesla owners, Hiller said, with texts like “Anti Elon Tesla Club” or “I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy” or a picture of Musk in clown makeup the words “space clown”.

“People keep telling me that these stickers make them feel like they can drive their Teslas again,” said Hiller, who had to set aside part of his home to accommodate the growing operation. Hiller invents slogans like “Elon Ate My Cat,” a reference to a debunked lie about immigrants eating pets in Ohio, which are then sold on Etsy and Amazon. “People are upset. “It’s really a relief to see that they’re awake,” he said of the increasing demand.

Musk, who is worth an estimated $314 billion, was once seen by many US liberals as an environmental hero and technology pioneer after making Tesla the world’s most valuable car company while warning: “Climate change is the biggest threat, to which humanity is exposed. “Century, except AI”.

But his reputation among electric-vehicle-buying liberals took a hit when he used X to promote far-right conspiracies, railed against the “woke-mind virus,” and enthusiastically promoted Trump, even appearing at the president-elect’s rallies and election campaigns for battleground states he financed.

Musk is now closely integrated into Trump’s new administration and heads a new “Department of Government Efficiency” that is planning mass layoffs of US government employees. Some Tesla owners were horrified. “I thought Elon would move our country forward, but he turned out to be kind of an evil person. It’s scary for someone with that much money to be that close to a politician,” said Mika Houston, a gym teacher in Las Vegas who has owned a Tesla Model 3 for three years.

“I still love my car, but I’m thinking about whether I condone this behavior while driving. “It’s embarrassing for me to drive around in this car after the election and think about the man behind it,” said Houston, who bought an “anti-Elon Tesla Club” magnet for her car and is considering whether to sell it .

Pamela Perkins, a photographer who lives in the Tesla heartland of California’s Silicon Valley, owns a Model Y but is among a group of friends who are all considering giving up their Teslas.

“I’m turning 80 in January, so I thought I’d have a sporty car that I could race against anyone when the light turns green,” Perkins said of her purchase. “There was a time when I thought Elon Musk was a genius, but he deteriorated very quickly. I remember telling my husband that I should sell this car and send a message out of consideration for my own conscience.

“A lot of people asked if I was going to sell the car. I have a friend who was about to buy a Tesla but decided against it because of him. But (Musk) doesn’t care about us, he’s got bigger fish to fry. He wants to colonize Mars.”

It’s unclear whether this backlash against Musk will hurt Tesla, which remains the dominant electric car maker in the United States. Sales have struggled somewhat this year, with a forecast decline of 7% in the most recent quarter compared to the same period in 2023, although analysts attribute this to increasing competition from other automakers and an aging Tesla offering Apart from a lot, hardly anything has changed – the hyped Cybertruck.

“Tesla is not the only player in town right now and they have not been aggressive in releasing new products,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive.

“Elon is Tesla: his personality definitely influenced the perception of the brand and he was polarizing. I don’t think we’ve seen any impact on sales from this yet. While I believe that will happen, it remains to be seen which consumers he will attract and which he will lose.”

Another uncertainty is how Trump’s policies will affect Tesla. The new president called the shift to electric cars “madness,” said supporters of such vehicles should “rot in hell” and promised to remove incentives to buy them. Trump has toned down his rant against electric vehicles after Musk’s endorsement, but still plans to eliminate a key tax credit for new buyers.

At the moment, however, there is a windfall for those selling anti-musk merchandise. “I feel like people really wanted to make their voice heard in some way, even if it was passive,” said Stacey Davis, who started selling Musk bumper stickers a year ago. Davis, who owns a Tesla, said she has seen an 800 percent increase in sales of these bumper stickers on Etsy since the election.

“Elon started to disagree with what I believed in and he just started to be really weird,” Davis said. “At first we thought, OK, he’s just one of those eccentric guys. But then when he got into his political issues, I thought, “Oh no, that’s not it.”

With Trump’s presidency looming in the US for the next four years, Musk’s involvement is a bittersweet prospect for some sellers. “I would be happy if he disappeared from public discourse and was just another rich guy,” Hiller said. “If I never sell an Elon sticker again, that’s fine. I would rather it be gone for the sake of the country and I could make stickers with fishes again.”