Well, that’s a small victory.
And, destroying a Tesla that is already purchased does not hurt Musk, just the owner and the Insurance company- if any.
Refusing to buy one, however- that is a solid idea.
- About 48% of Tesla’s market capitalization was wiped out in a matter of months.
- The decline came amid sagging sales and concerns about leadership, namely its CEO, Elon Musk.
- JPMorgan analysts said they couldn’t find “anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry.”
Tesla has lost so much value in such a short period of time that JPMorgan analysts said they couldn’t think of another comparable moment in automotive history.
As already noted, if people are worried about their cars being torched, they are less likely to buy a Tesla. It also publicizes the fact that a lot of people hate Tesla and Musk, which further drives down demand.
This isn’t rocket science.
The smallest.
I saw another article about this that basically said, “it’s just a correction, the stock was massively overvalued based on ordinary metrics.”
I just hope that Scott Kelly doesn’t trade in his Tesla for a Ford. Henry Ford was quite the asshole, too.
Certainly possible. The stock market is an arcane art.
LIterally everyone knows that and he died almost 70 years ago.
Also, Scott Kelly is the brother of the senator in question.
Sure, but how often does he post shit on Twitter these days?
Yeah, i don’t worry much about enriching dead people, nor about validating them. I think this came up when we were taking about authors with unsavory personalities, too. I’m much more likely to avoid their works if they are alive than if they are dead. And if they are long-dead, i just don’t much care, except to better understand their works.
There’s also the issue of what they are doing. When a public figure is using their wealth to promote whatever it is you find obnoxious about them or just generally calling harm, that makes giving them more money to do more damage a genuine problem. That’s different than one who has nasty opinions but isn’t actually doing anything about them.
There’s a large spectrum between “said some bigoted things in an email twenty years ago”, and “is actively harming thousands or millions of people right now.” And Musk is all the way to the latter end of it.
Oops, you’re right. Sorry.
Setting cars on fire is a time-honored tradition in Berlin. We just normally wait until May 1st for that. It does bear noting though that Tesla is particularly unpopular here. The factory in Brandenburg was opposed locally before and during its construction, and after it opened Tesla’s completely unsurprising anti-worker tactics have kept it… “controversial,” let’s say.
Last year the residents of the local municipality voted 2:1 against allowing the factory to expand. Given that city governments here are moderately corrupt, and it was a non-binding vote, this went as well as the referendum to keep Berlin-Tegel Airport open and the expansion was approved anyway. I have heard gleeful speculation from locals that this may not matter if the factory is a victim of Musk facing consequences for election interference, but see previous sentence.
Anecdotally, this person says “I personally know of a case where the owner took the Tesla outside the city to relatives” and I have heard similar (that was also from last week, before this recent spate of arson). Germany is a major EV market, but Tesla has never had the kind of commanding presence it had in the US. At least here in Berlin I don’t think we were ever especially primed to vibe with Tesla’s gamer-boy chic (I mean: ooh, a giga-factory 
) or view them as a particularly innovative or aspirational brand so there’s not an established base of Germans inclined or able to rationalize owning one despite social opprobrium.
They would also need to be the right people 
and unfortunately, despite Musk stumping for his Neonazi buddies in the AfD, they are not big EV consumers. A lot of Germans drive cars but acquire them through their company (company lease cars are a majority of new vehicle sales) and if the teams managing those acquisitions view Tesla as toxic, then the addressable market for Teslas in Germany is the subset of Germans who would be willing to buy them and Germans who would be willing to buy their own car rather than taking it as a company perk.
A Tesla down the street had large letters on the front bumper spelling out “F-ELON”. I don’t think that Colorado has new sex offender registry requirements that obligate those convicted to label their cars, so I suspect it is a political statement.
Anyway, I was going through some stuff in my Mom’s garage and found this vintage Jeep badge. Will people think my EV is made by AMC if I swap it onto my trunk?
That will fool a non-zero number of people, and make the rest laugh. Go for it.
Oh, definitely.
And if you’re game to up your odds, might I suggest …
Maybe on each front fender.
ETA: maybe to gild the lily just a skosh…
Wow, what a spelling Nazi! (I kid, I kid)
There are no bad tactics, only bad targets. Apparently if you own a Tesla, you are a good target.
By “good” and “bad” are you talking about effectiveness or making a moral judgment? Those are separate things, and I’m talking only about the former.
If Tesla sales continue to collapse the factory expansion may be abandoned because it no longer makes economic sense.