For These Tesla Owners, a Rough Ride From Status Symbol to ‘Swasticar'

New York Times

28-03-2025

On the Lower East Side of Manhattan this month, two men spray-painted a red swastika on a parked Tesla Cybertruck. In the borough's meatpacking district, six people sat on the floor of a Tesla showroom and refused to leave, chanting 'Elon Musk is unelected, democracy must be protected' before being arrested. In Albany, lawmakers called for New York State's pension fund to unload its 3.5 million shares of Tesla stock.
And in Harlem, Fred Brathwaite, a visual artist and hip-hop pioneer who goes by Fab 5 Freddy, decided it was time to part ways with his Tesla Model 3, which he bought in 2019. His reasons were unrelated to the car's performance. 'It's really looking like you're wearing a red MAGA hat driving this car,' he said.
New Yorkers once embraced Teslas as that rare signifier of liberal green virtue that actually had some giddyap under the hood — an anti-S.U.V. that didn't drive like a cup of herbal tea. But now, as the cars are being overshadowed by their company's leader, that embrace is shading toward regret, like a what-was-I-thinking haircut in an old class photo.
For Mr. Brathwaite, who loved his Tesla for the technology, not least the kicking stereo system, the turning point came when he watched the company's chief executive, Elon Musk, thrust his arm out in a way that struck many as mirroring a Nazi salute.
'That was insanity to me,' Mr. Brathwaite said. 'And then I see people calling it the 'Swasticar.'' Driving his once-beloved Tesla these days, he said, 'I feel like I'm lugging around all that negative baggage.'
So he's going to unload it.
He's not alone. Tesla owners nationwide are trading in their vehicles at record rates, said Jessica Caldwell, assistant vice president of insights at Edmunds, which tracks new and used car sales. At the same time, she added, online interest in shopping for a Tesla has hit its lowest point since 2022.
Kara Li, an art historian in Brooklyn Heights, feels lucky to have traded in her family Tesla during the summer, before the backlash gathered too much momentum.
She described her Tesla years almost like a relationship that went sour: It's not me, it's you.
When she first got the car in 2018, she said, it came with an implied understanding that both brand and driver were 'concerned about emissions and fossil fuels and the future of our planet.' But as the years went on, she said, 'it became more focused on the cult of Elon Musk. That was not something that appealed to us or that we wanted to be associated with.'
So they traded in their Tesla for an electric Ford.
New York is not historically a car town, but the weekly demonstrations at Tesla showrooms in the meatpacking district and in Brooklyn have been some of the biggest and most visible in the country, and have led to 15 arrests for civil disobedience, said Alice Hu, an organizer at Planet Over Profit, one of the groups behind the Manhattan demonstrations.
She said she expected this Saturday's 'Tesla Takedown' protest to be the largest yet, as demonstrators gather at more than 200 of the company's 277 dealerships in the United States, and more in Europe.
All have contributed to a turbulent season for Tesla and its investors. Vehicles have been set on fire or vandalized with slices of American cheese, sales of the once-hot cars have slumped and the company's stock price has fallen by almost 50 percent since mid-December. In one bad day this month, Mr. Musk's net worth dropped by $29 billion.
Last week, Tesla announced a recall of nearly every Cybertruck because of a problem with an exterior trim panel. The recall was the eighth in the aesthetically divisive vehicle's two and a half year existence.
Citing both political and financial objections, lawmakers in New York are pushing to unload Tesla stock from city and state pension funds.
'It started with ethics and transparency in his own practices, and what he's doing with DOGE,' said Patricia Fahy, a Democratic state senator who drafted a letter urging the state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, to divest the state's 3.5 million shares of Tesla. 'Then we saw his stock was plummeting.'
A spokesperson for Mr. DiNapoli said the state pension fund remained 'committed to monitoring risk to our investments and engaging portfolio companies, including Tesla, to preserve and enhance the long-term value of our investments.'
In total, 25 senators signed the letter, all of them Democrats.
Justin Brannan, a City Council member from Brooklyn who is running for city comptroller, called for City Hall to sell off the $1.2 billion of Tesla stock in its pension funds, recalling the actions of previous comptrollers to divest from fossil fuel stocks. Mr. Musk, he said, was bad for democracy in general, and bad for New York specifically.
The city should not be 'investing pension funds in a company owned and operated by someone who has New York City in its cross hairs,' Mr. Brannan said.
A spokesperson for Brad Lander, the current comptroller, who is running for mayor, said his office was 'exploring all options, balancing our fiduciary duty to New York City pensioners and the longstanding concerns we've raised with Tesla about governance and management issues.'
Of course, not all remorseful Tesla owners are ready — or able — to give up their wheels. For those who aren't, there is a gusher of blame-deflecting bumper magnets, each reflecting a different hue of anti-Musk sentiment. Perhaps this one, from Zazzle: 'MAKE THIS CAR NOT EMBARRASSING AGAIN.'