Anger at Elon Musk turns violent with molotov cocktails and gunfire at Tesla lots
The string of violence against Tesla storefronts, charging stations and vehicles exacerbates the company’s woes, analysts said.
washingtonpost.com
The woman in the black hoodie walked onto the Tesla car lot prepared to inflict damage. She came with four Smirnoff Ice bottles filled with gasoline, flung them at electric vehicles parked around the dealership and watched as they burned.
Over the course of 13 days starting Jan. 29, according to court records, Lucy Grace Nelson made repeated trips to the Tesla car lot in Loveland, Colorado. Once, she spray-painted “Nazi” in black under the dealership’s entrance sign, according to court documents, and another time, she ignited a molotov cocktail near a Tesla Cybertruck. She also allegedly used red spray-paint to scribble a message on the car dealership’s entrance doors: “F--- Musk.” Nelson’s lawyer declined to comment on the case.
Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive actshave been directed at Tesla facilities, according to court documents, surveillance photographs, police records and local media reports reviewed by The Washington Post. The incidents come as Elon Musk has rocketed to prominence as Trump’s best-known backer and as a conservative provocateur in his own right. The ire directed at the tech billionaire online has increasingly spilled into real life, with vandalism directed at Tesla storefronts, charging stations and vehicles.
In March, several Tesla superchargers at a shopping center in Littleton, Massachusetts, were set ablaze. Vandals in Maryland also spray-painted “No Musk” onto a Tesla building, alongside a swastika-likesymbol. In February, a man brandishing an AR-style semiautomatic weapon fired at a Tesla storefront in Salem, Oregon. Just a few weeks earlier, investigators say, the same man attacked the same dealership by throwing molotov cocktails at Tesla vehicles and through the store window. He caused an estimated $500,000 in damage, according to court documents.
The destruction adds to the woes of a carmaker already in turmoil. Its stock has fallen by more than 35 percent since Trump’s inauguration, and last year, the company suffered its first annual sales drop in more than a decade. In Germany, Tesla car sales plummeted by 76 percent in February compared with a year earlier, according to figures released Wednesday. And some owners have expressed buyer’s remorse over owning a car some now see as a symbol of far-right politics, a stark departure from the environmental consciousness it once epitomized.
Ross Gerber, a longtime Tesla investor and Musk critic, said the reports of destruction against Tesla storefronts, cars and superchargers could create a “chilling effect.” Customers “may not want to associate … with Elon and deal with vandalism,” he said.
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