The Current - Teslas used to be cool. Now, people are protesting them

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Many Tesla drivers are doing everything they can to distance themselves from the company’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk, as the cars become targets for vandalism and protest. We look at whether or not the movement might actually hurt the carmaker, and how these EVs went from a left-wing status symbol to a token of conservative politics.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. New York test has dumped your stock. So many people here are Tesla owners. So a lot of these people don't like what's going on with Elon Musk and with the government. It's letting people go, like, hey, we don't judge you as a Tesla owner

because you may have bought this because of climate change concerns or some other reason. But now with Elon Musk and the government, we encourage you to maybe sell your Tesla. I'm in the process of getting my car repaired so that I can sell it. I have a Tesla wife. I've had it since 2022 when they first came out. I'm tired of Elon Musk of all this garbage that's going on so I'm getting rid of this car because I'm embarrassed to drive it.

It is a tricky time to be the owner of a Tesla. The electric car company run by the world's richest man Elon Musk has been enormously successful here in Canada and around the world's richest man, Elon Musk, has been enormously successful here in Canada and around the world. That glow dimmed for many when Musk threw his support and millions of dollars behind Donald Trump and then brought his chainsaw to Trump's department of government efficiency, slashing huge swaths of the US government.

Protests erupted outside of dealerships, around the world, sales of Teslas dropped dramatically. Owners are trading their cars in at a record pace or replacing the logo on the back with one from a less controversial vehicle like a Subaru. And some Tesla drivers are finding their cars keyed or sprayed with graffiti or getting a nasty letter in the mailbox. It says quote, Dear neighbor, won't you please consider getting rid of your Tesla vehicle? The message you are sending at this point is, quote, I am a Nazi too. I'm not an Elon fan. I'm not a Trump fan.

I'm disgusted by the state of the world and what's going on. It keeps me up at night, but there's better ways to handle it than sending a very offensive letter. Police in Calgary and Hamilton, Ontario are investigating after Tesla vehicles and those cities were found torched.

The Vancouver Auto Show, it was announced that it's removing Tesla from the event, saying it was concerned about the safety of attendees and exhibitors. Here is how this controversy is playing out on Reddit. It's almost like actions have consequences. When your management is so intertwined with the perception of the brand,

their actions can have serious repercussions. Turns out when you give in to terrorists, people don't like that. When terrorism starts to win, that is a huge problem. God forbid Canadians don't like the car company that financed the guy who is now continually threatening Canadian sovereignty. Juan Alperin was at the Tesla protests

in Surrey, British Columbia last week. He's an associate professor in the publishing program at Simon Fraser University, and he's in our Vancouver studio. Juan, good morning. Juan Friesen Good morning, Matt. Matthew Feeney Why are you protesting Tesla? Juan Friesen For me, it's really about protesting more than

just Tesla. I'm really protesting all of the tech titans and the role that they're playing in shaping our world. I think they control the platforms that shape our interactions, our communications with one another, and they're doing so in a way that is helping to push forward right-wing ideology, white supremacist views, and making profit out of disinformation. And so for me, it's a protest about much more than just Tesla itself. It's protesting the larger ecosystem that these tech titans are controlling.

And so why is Tesla the venue or the vehicle, actually the vehicle, for you to express those views? For a couple of reasons. One, I think Musk right now is very much at the front of this. We saw him doing the Nazi salute in front at the inauguration. We saw him very much sort of leading this movement. But there's an opportunity with Tesla to actually try to curtail Musk's power and control. And that's because the Tesla stock value is largely caught up in what is sort of known as a meme stock.

People are really investing in it because they're investing in Musk, not investing in the car company itself. And a lot of Musk access to cash right now is tied up, is in Tesla. He's used it to borrow, to buy Twitter and to do some of the things that he does. And if we can change the public perception of that company, it's a way of taking away materially some of his access to the cash that he can use to do things. And it's a way to signal to the rest of the world that there is a lot of us that are really discontent with this moment. Do we know that that's why people are investing in Tesla because it's a meme stock?

I mean, it is one of the most successful car companies in the whole world. We saw the rise in Tesla stock value right when Trump was elected. You can see it really shot up in value and that was not because the company had done anything or announced any changes. It was because people realized that Musk was going places. And so now we're starting to see the decline and these protests are really having an effect in helping to bring back down the value of that stock. You brought your son to the protest?

Yeah, I did for a couple of reasons. One is because it is because I'm thinking about his future and that I'm feeling for the first time I think in my life not that optimistic about where things are going in the world. And I'm doing this in part for him and for his future and the future of everyone else in our society. But also because I wanted to show him that it's important to stand up for what we believe in and what we see some things that are wrong in the world.

It's important to take action. You're part of this group called Tesla Takedown. We reached a US Tesla protester in Boston. His name is Nathan Phillips. Have a listen to what he had to say. Elon Musk is plundering and raiding our federal agencies and essentially attempting to dismantle the federal government. And our levers of power are pretty limited right now, because they're essentially running roughshod over our judiciary. Law doesn't matter.

And so these Tesla takedowns are direct economic disruption of Elon Musk's primary source of wealth. When he says our government and our institutions, he's talking about the United States as our government and our institutions, he's talking about the United States and Elon Musk's role in the US government. Why do you think it's important that Canadians get involved in these protests? Musk isn't doing anything with regards to this government and its operations.

This is in the United States. So why do you think it's important that Canadians should be out protesting? I mean, there's a couple of reasons. We're really tied up in this in multiple ways. One is that we see that these platforms that are being used by all of the tech titans, for me, like I said, it's really not just about Musk himself,

but really around that ideology that's being espoused. And we're subject to it in Canada as well. We are our own information ecosystem is subject to the same kind of disinformation. We've seen the rise of extremist right-wing views and white supremacist views in Canada and as well we know that we are affected by everything that's happening in the United States leading to this tariff war that is now affecting Canadians in even more direct ways. Tesla is one of the most popular electric

vehicle companies and there are many many people who drive them just because that's the car that they bought and there wasn't, they may not have been making a political statement, they may have bought it because they got a rebate from the government to buy an electric vehicle, the same as rebates existed in, in Quebec and in British Columbia as well. Um, what do you say to people who just, they're

not taking a political stand, they like their car and they want a reliable electric vehicle. Yeah, I feel for a lot of Tesla owners that bought their cars really trying to do some good in the world by trying to have an electric vehicle. This protest is really not against the Tesla owners in particular, but it is around raising awareness and around changing the public perception of the company. But a lot of those owners are being targeted, right? You hear of people who they drive by and someone gives them the finger, the car gets keyed when they're in the grocery store, they come out to the parking lot

and there's a big scratch from the side of it. Yeah, I really think that that's unfortunate. I certainly wouldn't condone that kind of behavior nor all of the destruction of property that is happening around the dealerships. I mean, that's the other part of it, right? Is that there are many dealerships where cars have been set on fire,

where people have thrown a Molotov cocktail through the window of the dealership and what have you? I think that, again, for me, it's not about targeting at all the individual Tesla owners. But certainly it's unfortunate that they're kind of caught in the middle of this. And I say it's very different for those that own a Tesla car that they bought maybe five or more years ago.

People that are driving around in the cyber trucks, they did that and they made those purchases after Elon Musk had made his views very clear. How far do you think those protests should go? I think when we're talking about the destruction of property, for example, how far should they go? I think that the focus needs to be on connecting what is happening around those protests with the larger information ecosystem that we're a part of and the role that the tech titans and corporate interests are taking a hold in governments around the world. and I think we need to continue these protests and continue to try to destroy the the image of Tesla

not the physical embodiment of Tesla until the stock returns down to at least what it's only worth as a car company and not what it's worth as an investment in these ideologies. Do you worry that protesting a very successful electric vehicle company will hold back the growth of electric vehicles in Canada? People have seen this in many ways as a Trojan horse, that people bought Teslas and that helped create a sense of excitement around electric vehicles in this country. I give credit to what Tesla did around creating and really moving the EV vehicle market.

But I think that they're not going to affect this, which is quite detrimental to both the – not just in the U.S. and in Canada, but really around the world. And I think that there are now that the market has been established, that all other car companies have caught up, and there's so many other EV options that we need to pivot and start continuing to invest in electric vehicles, but do so with companies that are not invested in these types of extreme ideologies. Just finally, what would success be for you when it comes to these protests?

Like I said, they're really the bringing down of the stock value of Tesla is sort of a measurable effect that we can see in this. To teach Elon Musk. To teach not just Elon Musk, but to show the world that there is people ready to mobilize and take action against these ideologies and profit off of divisive politics and of dividing society instead of helping us come together. We can regulate these companies so that it betters our society, not so it divides us and creates and fosters hate. Juan, thank you very much for this.

A pleasure. Juan Alpern is an associate professor at Simon Fraser University. He was at the Tesla showroom protest last Sunday in Surrey, British Columbia. When Teslas first came on the market in 2008, they were considered a symbol, either of environmental goodwill or conspicuous consumption

or maybe a combination of the two. Now the political tides have turned. US President Trump is advertising Tesla on the lawn of the White House. Can I get in? Get in! Okay. This is a different panel than everything's computer. That's beautiful. To walk us through this political and cultural shift, we have two reporters who follow Tesla.

Andrew Hawkins is The Verge's transportation editor. He's in San Jose, California. And Anita Balakrishnan is an automotive reporter with The Logic, and she's with me in our studio in Toronto. Good morning to you both. Thanks for having me. Andrew, just briefly remind us of the early days of Tesla. When the cars appeared, what do people think of them? Yeah, when they first came out on the scene, I guess the Model S was really the first model that Tesla released that made a statement was, it was very technologically forward,

it had this giant touchscreen inside, it had this very sleek aerodynamic profile, and it had a real range that I think most electric vehicles that had been produced up until that point had not really even achieved. So it was certainly a moment in which a lot of people assumed that electric vehicles had truly arrived. Elon Musk was at the front of the company.

But the company itself was struggling. It did not make that much money. It was very much a niche vehicle. It was very expensive and it was difficult to acquire. So for a long time, the company really struggled and it wasn't until they received loans from the government, from the US Department of Energy, for clean energy innovations

that they were able to really kind of find their footing and get out of the hole because it was for many years that the company was sort of flirting with bankruptcy I would say. So it was a loan from the government that really kind of set Tesla on its way. Anita, what did you see here in Canada? What did early Canadian support for Tesla look like? Yeah. So, um, British Columbia and Quebec have for many, many years been the two, uh, most widespread adopting EV jurisdictions in North America. The only state that's come close in recent years has been California.

Obviously California has a very different kind of, uh, income profile than, uh, British Columbia or Quebec. And so this was really a grassroots brand that they didn't have traditional dealerships and how they sold their product was people got referral bonuses. So this was really Quebecers and British Columbians convincing their friends to buy these products and getting people on board, teaching them how to use electric vehicles for the first time. So there was this, that's why you're seeing, I think, some of this real betrayal feeling in Canada right now.

Is it fair to call it kind of a gateway vehicle or a Trojan horse in some ways that it changed how people thought of electric vehicles? I think certainly the supercharger network, people seeing electric vehicle chargers out and about gave people the sense that they didn't seeing electric vehicle chargers out and about, gave people the sense that they didn't have to jerry-rig something in their garage to be able to drive this type of vehicle, that they could take a road trip. And a lot of people that I've spoken with,

were very impressed by that, and that's kind of what got them really hooked on the product. In the complex world we are living in, today's boards must be resilient by design. Join the Institute of Corporate Directors on June 3rd and 4th at the Edmonton Convention Center for the National Director Conference and Fellowship Awards Gala. Network with Canada's largest director community and learn how to be more resilient in the face of increased demands on the board, register at conference.icd.ca join Institute of Corporate Directors. Think beyond the boardroom. What do you see when you look around? Lively cities, growing neighborhoods,

things that connect us. For those in the skilled trades, it's a world they help create. Discover more than 300 careers, paid apprenticeships, and the unmatched feeling of saying, I made that. Learn more at Canada.ca slash skilled trades. A message from the Government of Canada. Andrew, Elon Musk seemed to enjoy some support and it's not just, you know, support for the company financially, but support from Democrats in the early days. The idea is that, that in some ways it, it coded left if you drove a Tesla back in the day, when did that change?

When did Elon Musk start looking across the political aisle? Yeah, I would say it was probably around the time of the early days of Joe Biden's presidency. There was a summit at the White House where the administration invited automakers to come and talk about electrification and the shift to electric vehicles. And Tesla and Elon Musk were not invited to that event. At the time, Tesla accounted for the vast majority

of the electric vehicles that were sold around the world. And I think he took that as a slight. And the reason was because Joe Biden was very pro union, pro labor, and Tesla was a non-union shop, and Musk had resisted unionization efforts at Tesla's factories. So I think that that was sort of the first step towards seeing Musk kind of like shift his politics to the right.

Obviously he was obviously very prominent on Twitter and kind of steeped in a lot of the conspiracy theories and things that were going on on that platform. And then when he acquired the platform, we started to see him really his politics really start to move toward the right and really sort of, you know, aggressively move against Biden and also COVID restrictions was played a huge role in that I would say as well the the movement to shut down factories and to mask up during the pandemic. He was also very resistant to. So I think that sort of those factors kind of moved him along the way. And then obviously I think with the assassination attempt

on Donald Trump during the campaign was when he came out full force and said that he was going to support Trump and spend money to see him elected. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into Donald Trump's reelection campaign from Elon Musk. Anita, what happened to Tesla and Tesla sales in particular in this country, but also in the United States

after Donald Trump was elected? So initially after the election, we saw a big surge in the stock as we heard earlier. And it's been kind of hard to tell through the data exactly what's been happening because we've been seeing a lot of interesting movements in incentive redemptions from Tesla. What are you talking about there? So I think the Toronto Star has reported on this and other outlets now. The Canadian federal incentives for electric vehicles were paused at

the end of January. In a given year at back of the napkin, Tesla usually gets around $215 million in rebates over the course of the year, Tesla dealerships. And in January alone, they redeemed something like $40 million or something. So that was a big spike. A lot of dealerships were not able to get all their redemptions in because the program ran out of money. And so I think that Transport Canada is looking into this, trying to figure out exactly what happened here. But yeah, they certainly got a disproportionate amount of incentive despite the fact that data around the world shows their sales declining. Well, declining, I mean, falling off the table in some places, down what?

More than 70% in Germany, 50% in Portugal. Are we seeing a decline? Is there a decline in this country in terms of Tesla sales? They sold a lot of cars before, they're just selling fewer than fewer cars now? It's things that things are certainly suggesting that way. Sales of all electric vehicles went down over the past two months, including Tesla. Andrew, how much trouble is this company in right now? I mean, and it's not just the Cybertruck, which apparently has to be recalled because they used the wrong glue on this truck

and parts of the truck are falling off. Broadly, how much trouble is Tesla in right now? Yeah, I mean, that recall was certainly indicative of broader problems, but yes, I would say that they are in a particularly vulnerable place right now, which is why I think you're seeing so many of these protesters really kind of motivated to, you know, sort of like amp up their efforts. But yeah, as you noted, you know, Tesla sales were flat in the United States or globally

last year. And we're starting to see sort of in the first few months of this year that it's really it hasn't turned around. In fact, it's going down even steeper. And especially in Europe, Tesla sales are down, I think 10% in Spain, 42% in Sweden, 45% in France, 48% in Norway, you know, just across the board that these sales are flagging. And then I think also in China, which is an incredibly important market for the company, they've been on a sustained losing streak for several months now.

And we're seeing rising competition, these Chinese domestic companies that are coming on the scene with a lot more options, with cheaper vehicles, with just a broader lineup. Whereas Tesla's lineup has seemed to be pretty much stuck in the same place it's been, despite the Cybertruck, which has had a number of problems. There really haven't been a number of new models and especially affordable models, which I think is what a lot of experts are hoping to see from the company to really help pick

up the sales. Can I just ask you quickly, Andrew, about the escalation and the protests? We've seen dealerships being firebombed in Calgary and in Hamilton. Police are investigating. In the United States, the attorney general says that those acts should be considered domestic terrorism. What do you make of that? Yeah, it's, I think what you're seeing now

is Musk's political calculations really starting to pay off for him in some respects. He's able to call upon the full force of the United States federal government to come in and help not only sell his vehicles, there was the bizarre moment with Donald Trump on the White House lawn, basically as a plain cosplay and as a used car salesman, but also that the Justice Department and law enforcement are going to back him up as well. I think that that is a problem for protesters.

The vast majority of protests that I've attended and seen and protesters who I've talked to, they condemn the violence. They say that this is a nonviolent movement. They had a mobilizing call earlier this week where they stressed repeatedly, this is their First Amendment right. They want to go out and they want to speak their minds and that there's violence that goes on as well that's not associated with the protest movement. That's just sort of going, that's an unfortunate sort of repercussion of what Musk is doing.

They're trying to say that it's not them that are instigating these violent acts because it's actually Musk and his activities that are doing it. One of those activities, Anita, is Musk tweeting that Canada isn't a real country. He later deleted that tweet, but he did it and people saw it. You hear about owners who want to abandon their cars. Tesla is very popular here, but you've also written about some of the ties that Tesla has

to this country's economy. Walk us through those because many, many more people may be implicated in the success or failure of Tesla than they might expect. Yeah, so it became clear pretty early on that many people viewed Musk as a Canadian and wanted to hear him come out more strongly against this implication of Nazism and also against the threats of annexation that the president was making. He went to Queen's University and I mean, spent a lot of time here.

Yeah, his mom is from here. So, you know, people really wanted to appeal to that. It seemed like the early sort of ideas that people had around revoking his citizenship or banning taxis from buying, getting incentives for Tesla. Those things weren't really working. So we wanted to look at things like the $2 billion of pension funding that is in Tesla stock, the Supercharger Network funding to university programs, and see where there might

be leverage at the negotiating table with Elon Musk. And yeah, there's been some very interesting things. In Quebec, they obviously make a lot of money through collecting credits that they sell to other automakers. But there are some things that are more difficult to extricate ourselves from, such as the supercharger network, which we have been kind of relying on to open up to other cars and kind of serve as the default fast charging network.

So you can't really, in some ways, untangle yourself from Tesla, or at the very least it would be very difficult to do that. It would require an investment, yeah, for us to kind of move away from that. And there has been kind of a multi-partisan support for the by Canada movement. And there's kind of no business model that's more American right now than the Tesla business. So it is a, there's a lot of support behind that untangling. The question is how to do that.

Andrew, we're just about out of time. Very briefly, you wrote a piece in the headline, I mean, you don't mean to write the headline, but the headline said a lot, is Tesla cooked? Is this company done? Is it, can it be saved? So I think that, you know, it would take a lot to really take Tesla down all the way,

but I do think that it could certainly come back down to earth, right? You know, as was mentioned earlier in the program, Tesla's stock is really trading at multiples over other car companies around the world. It seemed that way because of Elon Musk, but also sort of his pushing of autonomous vehicles, robotics, AI, and also sort of the larger veneer of him

as the in charge of SpaceX and going to Mars and all of these things. It trades at around $250 a share. That's way more than Ford or GM or Toyota, for example, which are much more car companies that are invested in based on the fundamentals. Tesla really isn't seen that way. I do think that it is a very vulnerable place,

considering how much more over the rest of the auto industry Tesla is valued. And I think it certainly does bear the risk of coming back down to earth. And that would certainly have a huge effect on Elon Musk's net worth. And Nita, just very briefly, how big of a liability is Elon Musk to the future of Tesla? I mean, Tesla shareholders last year approved his big pay package. So they obviously see him as being worth, you know, whatever else they could spend that $60 billion or whatever it is. But, you know, as we heard earlier in this segment, certainly a lot of Canadians

would like to see the company take a different direction, refocus on the environment and its roots. And so, yeah, we'll see how people around the world react to that. Certainly, there's a lot of momentum against Musk's leadership at the moment. It's good to have you both here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Andrew Hawkins is The Verge's transportation editor. Anita Balakrishnan is an automotive reporter with The Logic. Your thoughts on this? Welcome. You can email us if you're a Tesla owner and maybe you're having second thoughts or not. Let us know. TheCurrent at cbc.ca.