Front Burner - Elon and the Tesla backlash

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Across the world an anti-Tesla campaign has been growing since Elon Musk began his work dismantling U.S. government institutions, and meddling in other country’s democracies. The protests, dubbed “Trash Tesla,” are seeing regular folks and former customers selling their cars, dumping stock and picketing dealerships. Others are torching Tesla vehicles.As a result the U.S. attorney general says they’re looking into the incidents as potential domestic terrorism.Today on the show, Wired writer Carlton Reid is joining us to talk about his reporting on the Tesla backlash. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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This is a CBC podcast. Hey everyone, it's Jamie. There was this Tesla in my neighborhood in Toronto the other day. Someone had slapped a bumper sticker on the back and it read, sorry guys, I just wanted an electric car. It's just a small example of this much wider campaign that has really ramped up against Elon Musk's company since it became clear to a lot of people that he has become a kind of menace to American

and global democracies. Tesla dealerships are being picketed around the world with a trash Tesla campaign gaining popularity. We liked what Elon used to stand for and now we don't. You did this to yourself, bro. We were devoted customers and now we are hell bent against you. I shouldn't even have an opinion about the guy. It's his own life, but being affiliated with them, people have an opinion about me. At the same time, there's been a lot of vandalism

and even some violence, with cars and cyber trucks being set on fire. Authorities investigating what they're calling a targeted attack on a Tesla repair center in Las Vegas. Charging stations have been damaged. Two individual cars have been painted with swastikas. And in at least three instances, shots fired at Tesla dealerships.

Tesla stock has fallen off a cliff, down 42% since the beginning of the year. Today on the show, Wired writer Carlton Reed is here, and we're going to talk about this campaign to take down Tesla, and how it has become this, at times violent, act of resistance against the Trump administration and the richest man in the world.

Carlton, hey, thanks so much for being here. That's quite right. So tell me how this campaign against Tesla and Elon Musk came about. What was the origin story here? Who's behind it? Can I start by just decoupling the violence and the Tesla takedown movement? So the protest movement is a grassroots, nonviolent protest movement, First Amendment, we're allowed to be on the sidewalk here and hold up our brown cardboard banners, poking fun at Elon Musk. And then you have the torturings and you have the criminal damage.

These are two very, very different things. So one shouldn't conflate the two. They're both going on at the same time, but they are very different people. Right. Well, then can you tell me a little bit more about this nonviolent, peaceful protest? I've interviewed the protagonists. It basically bubbled up on Blue Sky. So, you know, where people left, when they left Twitter, because of the same reason we're talking here now, the Elon Musk problem, and this disinformation researcher called Joan Donovan, Boston University, she messaged out we should be doing something on the streets and protesting this and put it out to her 20,000, 30,000 followers and a guy called Alex Winter, who is an award-winning documentary

filmmaker, amplified it and said, yeah, let's do something here. And then he created the Tesla takedown website and it's grown organically from there. And it's, as I said, it's grassroots. These are ordinary people. This is a pretty middle-class, kind of posh kind of movement. Upwards of a thousand demonstrators Saturday, targeting this Tesla store.

The country is being taken over by a fascist regime that's taking away our rights. It's scary. I grew up in the sixties and I have never seen it so bad. And I'm worried that my grandchildren won't grow up in a democracy. It's not the violent movement and these are not you know thugs going out there. These are grannies, these are families, these are mariachi bands, these are people just out there kind of having fun

outside a Tesla showroom now around the world. It's just you, using their right to protest to say, we don't agree with what is happening in the US government with this unelected, in effect, bureaucrat, who is, if not the president, certainly, you know, the best buddy. So they wanted to protest against that. And just to be clear here, these nonviolent protests, the pickets and stuff, it's also it's not just a few, right? They're popping up all over the country. Just before we started talking, I thought I'd go onto the Tesla takedown website and

count them. And it's now page after page after page. And for my piece, I went through every page and counted every single protest. Now it's getting so many, I can no longer keep count. So there are many hundreds. When I did my first story, there was about 110. And now, it's pretty much anywhere there's a Tesla, and even places where there probably aren't many Teslas,

there are now protests, mostly focused on Tesla showrooms, because that's the most visible presence of Elon Musk around the world. I'll just mention, we've had them here too. NBC and Langley residents joined one of those Tesla take-down protests as well, picking it outside a dealership. Elon Musk represents a real danger to democracy. He and President Trump and the other oligarchs are dismantling democracy in the United States right now.

And there's a very real threat that that movement will come across the border into Canada. And then I mentioned those bumper stickers on the Tesla in Toronto and the one that said, sorry guys, I just wanted an electric car. But there are lots of other examples of this. Tell me a little bit more about that. I know that you've also spoken to a bunch of pretty depressed Tesla owners and what did they tell you? Yes, I think these stickers, that's who they went to originally. There's some people making some decent money, you know, selling many, multiple thousands of stickers per day.

Drivers are sporting bumper stickers that read, I bought this before Elon went crazy. Some competitors like Kia are capitalizing. Their sticker says, I bought this after Elon went crazy. But mainly it's for Tesla owners to actually stick on their own car, which is an incredible thing to happen for any brand. For people to hide the fact or seek glory for the fact that they are owning this brand.

That's incredibly damaging. What are those people saying? The people that own the Teslas? Some go on the record with their names. The great majority, I'm having to talk to Via Signal and anonymize them. And that's because, you know, we're talking about the violence against Tesla showrooms. But people who

mention that they're no longer fans of Elon Musk or Tesla are getting death threats and getting lots and lots of horrible stuff happening to them. But they all say roughly the same thing. And in fact, I was in a hotel this morning where there was an owner of a Polestar car, which like a Tesla competitor. And I was saying, that's a nice car you've got there. Why have you got a Polestar? And she said, Oh, it was the Elon Musk thing, you know, before Christmas and she had to get rid of Tesla because it's now toxic. And every person you speak to, a Tesla owner, are either in that kind of process of getting rid and knowing they're going to lose a ton of money, or they've already got rid of their Tesla.

How has Elon responded to all of this? What have we seen him do? Do we have a sense of whether this has really shook him? So when I've done my articles on the Tesla take down movement, the first one I did, I asked Joan and Alex, I said, are you upset that Elon Musk hasn't mentioned you yet? And they kind of were because they assumed he would mention them. And at that point, he hadn't tweeted anything, hadn't said anything. And then it was just a day, two days after that. That's when he started saying it's violent protests. These are terrorists. And then he was trying to conflate the movement

with the violent protests which have been bubbling up. I mean, it's really come as quite a shock to me that there is this level of really hatred and violence from the left. Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they're burning down cars, they're firebombing dealerships. And I think there are larger forces at work as well.

I mean, I don't know who's funding it and who's coordinating it, because this is crazy. I've never seen anything like this. President Trump also started pitching in. The Trump administration calling the attacks on Tesla domestic terrorism. But I think they're going to suffer very grave consequences because they're really terrorists when you think about it. So very much he's noticed it and the share price has fluctuated. It hasn't just gone down.

It has gone up as well. That clearly has rattled him. Now whether it's the Tesla takedown protests that are doing that to his share price or just him himself. You know, nobody could ever really track that. But the very fact that he's tweeting about it and getting his best buddy in the White House to, you know, have a used car lot on the front of the White House. Right in front of the White House. They're just talking to Tesla. That tells you a lot. That tells you he is rattled.

I'm gonna buy because number one is a great product. Pitching like a car salesman it's odd to see the president gushing over an electric car. He's not a fan. But helping out first buddy Elon Musk after Tesla prices have been in a freefall. Let's spend a little bit more time on the share price. So I know you mentioned that it's hard to know exactly what's causing the meltdown. But the company also was facing other issues, right?

The company is, Tesla is coming under enormous pressure around the world. So at one point it was the only brand out there, literally the only electric brand, you know, at one point it was the only brand out there, literally the only electric brand, you know, mass market electric brand. That's not the case anymore. There are lots of electric car companies, including from China, which we get here in Europe. North America doesn't tend to get those Chinese cars. And they are having all of these pressures coming at them and tech better technologies and what you've got to understand is Tesla's model lineup is

incredibly dated you know these are old cars so if I was a Tesla director I'll be sitting here pulling my hair out because he is trashing the brand so for all of the Tesla take down being being something that's worthy of note is the one who's really doing Tesla takedown is Elon Musk himself. And so that's what's happening with Tesla. The competition, people realizing that Elon Musk isn't who he says he is and doesn't know what he says he knows, he's just having an enormous amount of pressure on that brand. So a normal company, you would get rid of that figurehead when they,

when that figurehead starts doing that kind of strange stuff. So the signs have been there. So anybody who's put the sticker on in the last year to say, well, I'm putting this on because that's before I long become crazy No, he's been crazy for years. We just haven't noticed and then more and more people have started to notice Alan Rarick was found dead in a parking lot in Oklahoma. He'd been shot twice. Once to the head.

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You mentioned before that the Teslas are much older models and not as shiny and interesting for people. But the newer models are the Cybertrucks, right? And that's also a problem. Am I correct to say that? Absolutely. Well, that's his vanity project. You know, what he should have done in the company, they knew this was they needed to bring out a cheaper, you know, an entry level electric car. So all the cars that Tesla has got at the moment, they're relatively, in fact, very expensive. So they are not, you know, entry level electric cars.

So he's let that market go. And that's the market that the Chinese are going to eat his lunch. Virtually all manufacturers are going to eat Tesla's lunch because they haven't done this cheaper product. Now Musk says it's coming. But he said that for all products, you know, constantly. Everything's always coming in the next year and it never arrives. It's like the full self-driving, you know, we're going to have complete roads with driverless

cars is what he said, you know, five years ago. And he said, yeah, that'll happen within two years. It never actually comes. He's really good at projecting all his dreams and hopes and bluster into the future. And you know the investors, the Tesla bulls who believe this stuff, just keep on inflating his share price. And at some point that's gonna stop and the company will collapse because they'll realize, you know, the robots, he says, they're going to do. Okay, there's 15 companies out there probably making better robots than Tesla.

Certainly better cars out there than Tesla. Robo taxis, big deal. Waymo has already got, you know, robo taxis driving around. So all these Tesla bulls are talking about technologies that other companies are doing, other companies are doing better, and they will come to rue the way they've allowed Musk to fool them. And just, um, didn't they very recently do a huge recall? Like, they basically recalled nearly all of the Cybertruck. 46,078 Cybertruck, which is every single Cybertruck

they have sold today. And the sales are dropping, partly for the Tesla takedown reasons, but mostly because the quality control on these things are terrible. It's the most recalled motor vehicle, in fact fact in America this year. Nothing else is anywhere close. This is absolutely ridiculous. Now some of the recalls are over the air but then there are these major physical ones. So the latest one dropped a couple of days ago, they used the wrong type of glue. The issue is linked to a cosmetic panel that could detach and then cause a road hazard

It is the eighth recall for the cyber truck since it was first released in 2023 the agency said and the reason that's that kind of funny for us not not funny for owners, but funny for us is that a couple years back Musk Said one of his many many episodes of bluster and hyperbole He said there's probably nobody on this planet knows about manufacturing more than me. I became very good at manufacturing because I had to, there was no choice. At this point I might know more about manufacturing than any human ever has because I've done so many, I've manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas.

I've manufactured so many different things in so many different arenas. Listen Musk, you can't even stick your cars with the right kind of glue. Don't come to me with saying you're a genius at manufacturing. Please. Tesla isn't the only company that Elon is at the helm of, right? He also helms Starlink, SpaceX, X. Are any of those companies facing any kind of protest campaigns? Are they taking big hits? They weren't before they are now.

You know, come January when Musk started really, you know, there was enough people gave him the benefit of the doubt in bankrolling Trump in the election. That was kind of one thing, but then really getting his hands dirty with the U S government that has changed a lot. And nation states who might've previously say bought Starlink and are realizing that this is an Elon Musk company, Elon Musk is now in effect, a player in another country that is becoming Elon Musk company. Elon Musk is now in effect a player in another country that is becoming a competitor country.

So where there were previous allies, America is, as you know in Canada, is making enemies of allies and making friends of it. What should have been its enemies? Ontario Premier Doug Ford says American businesses are gonna lose out on tens of billions of dollars in revenue and they only have Donald Trump to blame. The province ripping up that hundred million dollar contract it has with Starlink, which

helps to provide or would help to provide internet access to remote areas in Northern Ontario. And so the companies that Musk is involved with basically didn't invent these companies. He didn't found some of these companies. For instance, companies. He didn't found some of these companies. For instance, Tesla, he didn't found Tesla. You know, he's not a genius who thought of that first. He bought into it and then took over the company. So all of these companies that he in effect controls,

they too would probably quite like him not to be quite so visible. And they would much prefer them to do their business without him being in effect the head of the US government and that is damaging them. For instance, Starlink is the market leader right now, certainly can put you know more satellites into space. They can do all sorts of things that other companies can't do now. But those companies have probably got four, five, six months to catch up and they are being funded to do that by a whole variety of funding sources. So he's basically showing people what to do. Here's how to attack my companies and

you're attacking Musk and people are very happy around the world to Attack Musk and all of his different companies. They must be quaking in their boots thinking that he's destroying what he built up. I was just reading this piece in the New York Times that outlined how Musk and his companies are positioned to profit off billions of dollars in new government contracts. SpaceX is being trumpeted as this new way to move military cargo around the world. Starlink is now eligible for the federal government's $52 billion rural broadband push. NASA is being pushed to turn its focus to Mars, allowing SpaceX to move to put people

on that planet. And talking about Tesla in particular, Trump announced these tariffs on non-American car imports and some car parts on Wednesday. And this should benefit Tesla because it builds all the cars that it sells in the U.S. and would be exempt from tariffs. And my understanding is that this is not the case for Tesla's main competitors. This is all to say that on balance, it's not clear to me that Elon's decision to align himself with Trump is resulting or will necessarily result in this massive financial hit, right?

Yes. I mean, getting your fingers in the, that's a very lucrative pile to get your fingers into. Is it sustainable though? You know, an international company needs to sell internationally. Yes, you can get contract after contract after contract if your best buddy is giving you those contracts or if you're going in and destroying an agency and then gutting from the inside, but that's not terribly sustainable. And it's not something that technologically is very clever either, because you want the best of the best of the best and if all you're doing is in effect getting you know sugar daddy to bail you out well that's not a company that's gonna last for a long time so we've got four years of this okay he might earn a load of money in between times but that

doesn't mean that's gonna be the the case, you know, in the next administration. He's a phenomenally wealthy man, of course, and no matter how much Tesla takes him down, he's still going to be a billionaire. So when you talk about, you know, how much he's lost in the last few months, yes, he's lost half his paper fortune, but he's still phenomenally wealthy you know we're probably still in the top five in the Forbes list etc but it might not be like that forever so he does risk an enormous amount and that's that is his Motorseparundi he has risked so much in the past and he's now risking everything. He's put every single card on the table here for Trump.

And that, yes, in the short term might do him good. But in the long term, there are so many things that can derail you. Five years time, ten years time, come back to me. I think it'll be a very, very different picture. Yeah, I'd love to. You can say a lot of things about Elon Musk. One of the things is certainly an extraordinary risk tolerance.

Carlton, thank you very much for this. This was great, lots of fun. Thank you. Thank you. Just two things before we go. Transport Minister Christia Freeland says Canada has frozen $43 million in rebate payments for Tesla. This major and suspicious cash out happened in the final days of a federal EV rebate program. Tesla has also been banned from future EV rebates. And after heavy lobbying from Elon Musk and others, Delaware just passed

a new law that makes it harder for shareholders to take companies to court, and centralizes more power in the hands of CEOs and corporate boards. This followed a high-profile legal battle over a disputed $56 billion Tesla CEO pay package to Elon Musk. Alright that is all for this week. Frontburner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Matt Muse, Ali Jains, Joytha Shingupta, Kieran Outtorn, Mackenzie Hamrin, and Sam McNulty. Our video producer is Evan Agard, and our YouTube producer is John Lee.

Our music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blokos. And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. MUSIC For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.