 "A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest at electric carmaker Tesla's showroom in Seattle, Washington, US. Reuters")
Tesla’s reputation is closely linked to its CEO Elon Musk, who is also leading the White House-backed Department of Government Efficiency or Doge.
As part of his efforts, the billionaire has been rapidly dismantling government agencies and firing federal workers in large numbers across the US.
The move has triggered a wave of protests against his flagship company.
Over the weekend, protesters gathered outside Tesla showrooms in several cities, shouting slogans and denouncing Musk’s meddling in governmental decision-making.
The ‘TeslaTakeover’ hashtag has also been trending on social media platforms.
Let’s take a closer look.
The ‘Tesla Takeover’ protests
On Saturday, a group of up to 100 protesters gathered outside the electric carmaker’s showrooms in California, Kansas City, Massachusetts, Washington, Texas, and New York.
Rallies are being planned for locations in Ohio, Florida, Washington, New Mexico, and Alberta, Canada, according to a part of Action Network’s protest planning website.
Numerous protesters held signs comparing the Trump administration to Nazis, perhaps about Musk’s controversial salute on Inauguration Day or his support of far-right organisations like Germany’s AfD party .
The protest that took place in Berkeley, California, had 200 participants.
In the videos, people can be heard chanting, “Don’t buy swasticars” and “Elon Musk can go to Mars; we don’t need your Nazi cars.”
Alex Winter, an actor, filmmaker, and progressive activist who has been actively promoting this weekend’s rallies over the past few days, shared a photo of himself during a rally in Pasadena, California, holding a sign pushing people to sell their Teslas.
Referring to what is generally regarded as a constitutional crisis, a group of demonstrators raised signs and chanted “stop the coup” last weekend. According to CBS News, Tesla cars in Loveland, Colorado, were painted over with “offensive and hateful” graffiti.
Rise and Resist went back to Tesla today, to defend democracy and the Constitution against Musk’s criminal enterprise. #StopTheCoup #TeslaTakedown #EndOligarchy
[image or embed]— Rise and Resist ( @riseandresist.bsky.social ) February 16, 2025 at 12:29 AM
In January, another such incident occurred in Redwood City, California, where someone spray-painted the word “Nazi” on the side of a Cybertruck.
Earlier this month, swastikas with the words “No to Nazis” were spray-painted outside a Tesla dealership in The Hague, Netherlands.
Also read: Meet Steve Davis, Elon Musk’s cost-cutting crusader at Doge
‘Grinding on the mind’
The protesters are not targeting the company but the man behind it—Elon Musk.
Since Trump took office, Musk has been putting teams inside government departments to look through data and advocate for both “clawbacks” of previously spent funds and significant budget cuts.
Trump, who received enormous funding from Musk for his election campaign, is in line with the businessman’s decision to freeze hiring and lay off thousands of federal workers.
Musk claims to have exposed unnecessary spending and that the goal of his work is to improve government efficiency.
However, many believe that Musk is preventing the government from operating by accessing private information and making decisions that fall under elected officials.
“It’s a place where we can make a visible stand against him personally. He should not be deciding the fate of our democracy by disassembling our government piece by piece. It’s not right,” Linda Koistinen, a protester outside California’s Berkeley’s Tesla dealership, told BBC.
“It’s just really grinding on the mind. I’m 84 years old. This is unbelievable. This is a takeover of our government,” Dale Koistinen told the publication.
Also read: Who is Akash Bobba and the other members of Elon Musk’s secret Doge team?
Tesla’s stock price plummeted
Citizens have been urging one another to sell their Tesla cars and dump their Tesla shares for days.
Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow shared a video of her Tesla being dragged away on Instagram.
“My parents always said… you are who you hang out with. There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla,” she wrote in the caption, adding that she was donating proceeds from the car’s sale to National Public Radio in the US, a frequent target of Musk’s ire.
Although Tesla employees maintain that the firm and its CEO are independent entities, the company’s current estimation, which was improved by its earlier rapid sales growth, has played a major part in Musk’s fortune.
According to Bloomberg, shares in Tesla account for about a third of Musk’s wealth. He owns a third of the private rocket company SpaceX, while the remaining portion is connected to investments in xAI, the X social network, the Boring Company, a tunnelling company, and Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company. Musk has obtained billion-dollar personal loans using his SpaceX and Tesla stock.
Coming back to Tesla, the company’s stock soared after Trump’s November election, and Musk donated a quarter of a billion dollars to the Republican’s election campaign. Tesla’s stock, thus, had reached an all-time high in December.
However, soon after Trump’s inauguration, the company’s stock experienced a sharp selloff, losing 30 per cent of its value.
Tesla investors have expressed concern that Musk’s activities are negatively impacting the company.
According to The Guardian, some critics have even said the sharp decline in Tesla sales in Germany in December are linked to Musk’s support for the far-right AfD. As per the report, the vehicle sale in Germany fell 60 per cent year-on-year in January.
According to The Washington Post, during a recent meeting, senior executives and employees inside the firm stated that “the company would be better off if Musk resigned.”
With inputs from agencies