Two of the three friends I saw this weekend in Los Angeles told me they wanted to sell their Teslas. The third didn’t own a Tesla, but wanted to find a way to get rid of one anyway. As I left the third friend’s house after dinner Sunday night, I saw a bumper sticker wrapped in plastic by her front door. It said, “I got this before Elon went crazy.” This was the same sticker that I’m sure four women are affixing on fourteen children. The New York Times reported that since Elon Musk started working for Trump’s White House, “vandals have defaced or destroyed Tesla vehicles and damaged the company’s facilities in at least seven locations across the United States, from Oregon to Massachusetts,” though I’m pretty sure that when they say “from Oregon to Massachusetts” they mean “by plane.” On Thursday, more than 80 Teslas were attacked in Hamilton, Ontario. By Canadians. Who were neither in a bar nor a hockey rink. That’s a level of Canadian fury we haven’t seen since the French and Indian War.
The friend with the newly bought bumper sticker, Dyanne Stempel, told me that her Tesla is “a great car I used to love and now I look at it like an embarrassing asshole Trumpy member of the family that I want to punch in the face.” She feels trapped because breaking her lease would mean giving more money to Musk, which is something she does not want to do and something he won’t notice. But it’s making Dyanne miserable. “The ethical tsuris I feel driving around in a car designed by a ketamine-crazed lunatic who is quickly destroying the country with orgiastic glee weighs on me every day. More than caring what other drivers think of me, my own psychic burden is enormous.” My psychic burden is fine. I care about what my car says about me. It’s the first rule I was taught about living in L.A. When my lovely wife Cassandra and I bought our Tesla in 2021, we were thrilled. It was fast. Its tech was as seamless as an iPhone. It didn’t require trips for gas or oil changes. And we were saving the world from global warming in a way that was much more public facing than our overseas flights, heated pool, and wine cellar. But a year later, as Elon Musk turned rightward, my mom asked me if I was embarrassed by our Tesla. No, I explained. The company had done so much good for global warming. Sure, the CEO had some weird ideas about vaccinations and Thai heroes being pedophiles, but I bet the CEOs of lots of products I use have politics I disagree with. I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if there were some objectionable people who produce pornography. My argument fell apart this year. Disagreeing with a CEO’s ideas about government is one thing, but it’s another when they’re an actual part of the government. But my main moral miscalculation is that I did not expect Musk to go full Nazi. Now, whenever I wave people into my lane from my Tesla, I have to be careful about how high I raise my arm. Sure, I bought the Tesla before I knew Musk would join the far right, but if I bought a Kanye West T-shirt during the Touch the Sky tour, I wouldn’t wear it to lunch meetings now. So I proposed the bumper sticker idea to Cassandra. I’d seen a smaller, classier one on a Tesla in the Warner Bros lot that said
Cassandra told me I was being an idiot. “The bumper sticker is the worst of all worlds,” she explained. “You’re saying, ‘I feel bad about owning this car but not so bad that I don’t own this car.” What we need to do, Cassandra said, is lay low and not try to sell it in a market that is more interested in burning Teslas than buying them. “I’d rather just drive it until it dies. Which is probably soon since no one is bothering with the software updates,” she said. She’s right. Though if there’s a bumper sticker that says, “At least our fascist future will emit less CO2” I’m buying it. Thank you for paying to read my column. Wait: This is for the people who didn’t pay? Then I owe you nothing. You are the ones contributing to the end of my career. If you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get one extra post a month – which often won’t even be that good – upgrade to a paid subscription here:
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Friday, March 21, 2025
I'm Not Apologizing for My Tesla
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