However, there has been the feeling that at least some of the fall could be due to anger over Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s political activism and the decisions made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency under his leadership. Since mid-February, Tesla showrooms have attracted protesters in 100 or so cities across the US, eager to let passersby know their feelings about the chainsaw-wielding Musk.
These largely good-natured, sidewalk-staged protests—some with Mariachi bands, puppeteers, and large cardboard Cybertrucks to decorate—have been organized by a website called TeslaTakedown, and they attracted plenty of media coverage in the process.
Alex Winter, a Los Angeles-based documentary maker—and the titular Bill from 1988 time-travel comedy Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure—is the creator of the website. He tells WIRED that the TeslaTakedown movement wants to topple Musk: “We aim to devalue the brand. It’s a very simple and effective means for people to get onto the street and protest.” Media coverage amplifies the movement’s message, says Winter. “We want to spread verifiable, factual information on Musk, DOGE, and why Tesla should be devalued.”
“Musk himself is toxifying the Tesla brand,” Winter says. “We’re just helping him.”
TeslaTakedown started last month, kicked off by a February 10 posting on Bluesky by Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher and assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University. “Come out and participate in an international picket #TeslaTakeover locally,” she wrote, later agreeing with renaming the movement.
“I asked myself, what was I willing to physically do to raise awareness [about Musk]? Well, I’m willing to go out on Saturdays and protest in front of a Tesla dealership,” Donovan tells WIRED. “I made a flyer and started circulating it online. Alex saw my post, and we started texting about what to do; it all came together super fast.”
At the first demonstration in Boston on February 15, there were 50 people. By the third week, this had risen to 300. “I’ve met teachers, people who work in public health, people who are retired, students at universities—all Americans who want to see DOGE disappear,” says Donovan. “It’s not only a strategic boycott of Tesla, it’s a polyvocal protest where lots of grievances are aired.”
Elon Musk and Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, has studied over 300 modern uprisings worldwide and found that change usually becomes inevitable when just 3.5 percent of a population join a movement.
“There are typically far more people who sympathize with movements than people who actively participate in them,” Chenoweth tells WIRED.
So might TeslaTakedown work quickly? “Instead of thinking about how long it takes,” she says, “I typically look to see whether a movement is building pressure and momentum with each subsequent action.
“In the social science of these movements, many people talk about eliciting defections—making people within different pillars of support shift their loyalty away from the status quo. In the case of corporations, those pillars can include shareholders, workers, suppliers, distributors, advertisers, consumers, and those around them.”
Losing Loyalties
Those pillars may already be showing signs of instability. Across Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, and even X, posts have started to stack up of people saying they are ditching their Teslas. Singer Sheryl Crow was one of the more high-profile among them, who posted an Instagram video on Valentine’s Day wishing good riddance to her Tesla as it was driven away on a flatbed truck.
“There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla,” she wrote, adding that she was donating the sale proceeds to National Public Radio, because it was “under threat from President Musk.”
