I Regret My Tesla

Like a lot of Tesla owners, I recently found myself looking on the internet for bumper stickers. One favourite is “I bought this before Elon went crazy.” But in my case, if I am being honest, that’s not exactly true. I bought my Model Y in September 2023. By that time, Elon Musk had taken over Twitter, now X, and he not only revealed himself to be a jerk—long widely known—in his increasingly manic posts but he had also started reinstating people who had been kicked off the platform for their racist tweets. A few weeks after I bought the car, he replied to an antisemitic post that invoked the “Great Replacement Theory,” a supposed conspiracy to “swamp” white people with non-whites in the United States, calling it “the actual truth.” Of course, that was embarrassing as a new Tesla owner. But at the time, I was hardly alone. Most owners didn’t share Musk’s political opinions. Just the opposite: buyers of Tesla in the US, more than those of any other major car maker, leaned toward the Democratic Party. I told myself that plenty of people book Ubers, order from Amazon, and use Facebook (or X!) despite the politics and personal behaviour of their owners. But that seems very two years ago. Now Musk is a kind of Reichsmarschall for the first ever openly authoritarian president of the US. And it’s not just that he says “Canada is not a real country” (in a post that’s since been removed) and takes a chainsaw to USAID and the NIH with likely lethal effects. What did it for me was the Nazi salute and the endorsement of Germany’s AfD, whose leaders have brazenly revived Nazi slogans. I’ve talked to a few friends who own Teslas, and they share my discomfort. It’s not fun driving around in what some people are calling a “swasticar.” Add to that the purely selfish fear that Teslas these days are liable to be keyed or even torched.

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I recognize that whatever discomfiture people like me are feeling is trivial compared to the life-changing fears currently stalking people in the US. I have a friend whose kid’s education has been jeopardized by the crackdown on free speech, and I have Middle Eastern friends living in the US on green cards who may have reason to be deeply fearful. I got the Tesla for what I truly feel were the right reasons at the time. At the start of the pandemic, I bought myself a little Nissan Leaf, one of the few reasonably affordable and available EVs then on the market. The Leaf was a way of cutting down on my carbon emissions while running around town. But I also thought I could use it to cut out some carbon-heavy air travel. I decided to try driving from my home in Ottawa to Vancouver Island and then swoop down through the US, visiting friends in Colorado and Kentucky before heading home—a circuit of around 14,000 kilometres. It was a test of whether I could do it and whether it could be done. I could, and it could, but only barely. At the time, the fast-charging infrastructure for non-Tesla EVs was too clunky and unreliable for anyone but a committed eccentric to attempt such a trek. For much of the trip, I was besieged with grinding anxiety about my next charge and occasionally even worried about my physical safety. Soon after returning home, I bought the Tesla. Two weeks later, I headed off to Halifax and then Cape Breton. After the Leaf, it was a revelation. It had a longer range, but more importantly, the navigation system planned my trip with accurate information about where to charge and how long it would take. The chargers always worked, were extremely fast, and were no more trouble to use than plugging in a toaster. For some stupid reason, on that same trip, I also started listening to the (very long) audiobook of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk. I didn’t get to the end, because every business story seemed to follow a similar arc: Musk would have some wild idea, which he would drive in the face of skepticism from those around him. He’d savagely abuse his subalterns. And then the idea would prove to be either a stunning success or a complete flop. Rinse and repeat. But for the most part, I have driven happily without the sagas of Elon ringing in my ears. I’ve driven to my hometown of Winnipeg and back twice in the past six months, once in January when the temperature north of Lake Superior dipped to minus forty degrees (not counting wind chill). I wouldn’t recommend that trip at that time of year, regardless of whatever car you’re driving, but the Model Y managed it just fine. That said, every new outrage Elon commits triggers more jokes or pointed questions from friends, and the teasing does make me squirm. There’s a pretty good chance I’d show up for one of those protests at a Tesla dealership if I didn’t own one of those things. Sheryl Crow probably kickstarted the idea that Tesla owners should think about selling their cars when she did exactly that in February and donated the proceeds to NPR. It seems like some owners in Canada may be unloading their cars too—there appear to be more used Teslas on the market, and the prices are dropping. The Tesla owners I know personally are, by definition, reasonably prosperous, but they are not Sheryl Crow prosperous. I have one friend whose husband sold his Tesla and bought another EV (which he apparently doesn’t like as much). But most, like me, are reluctant to take a haircut amounting to tens of thousands of dollars to make a symbolic statement. I had planned to keep my Tesla Y for nine or ten years, as I usually do with a car. As a retiree, I will see a significant effect on my finances if I were to sell now. I wouldn’t be able to do many of the things I enjoy doing, and I wouldn’t be able to invest in further reducing my emissions, as I did last year by installing a heat pump at my house. Though I am not quite ready to sell, like most of my Tesla-owning friends, I have no intention of ever buying another. Many Canadians face real hardships ahead, potentially losing jobs and businesses because of Musk and his dear leader, Donald Trump. And in the darkness of night, many of us are contemplating something that was unimaginable just a year ago: If Trump does annex us, will I have the courage to stand up and fight? Compared to that, my little moral dilemma over the car seems puny. I have done something, though. A tiny little gesture of protest. I bought a bumper sticker. Not that first one I looked at. One that just says “Elon” with a big red slash across his name.The post I Regret My Tesla first appeared on The Walrus.