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Tesla stores, vehicles and chargers face continued vandalism and protests

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1 year ago

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Tesla’s stores, vehicles, and chargers have continued to face protests and acts of vandalism in recent weeks, as people have been targeting Elon Musk’s company for his recent work within the newly created government efficiency division under the Trump administration.

Over the weekend, Tesla’s Charging account on X responded to a user who posted a photo of a Supercharger post tagged with the word “Nazi” and a swastika, noting that the company would have the graffiti removed immediately and would press charges for vandalism at any of its chargers.

The user who originally posted the photo at his local Supercharger says he’s located in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the event comes as the latest of several protests both over the weekend and vandalism events in the past few weeks.

Below you’ll find a few links to some other relevant pieces, a short roundup of just a few of the recent anti-Tesla protests and vandalism events, and a bit more background on the recent outrage against Musk.

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Recent Tesla protests and vandalism: a short roundup

San Francisco, California Tesla store protest

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D.C. Protestors call for ‘Less Elons and More Luigis,’ say Elon should need ‘100 bodyguards instead of 20’

Pennsylvania Tesla store protests

In a report on Sunday from The Philadelphia Inquirer, a few protestors can be seen outside the company’s Devon, Pennsylvania store holding signs out to passing vehicles.

A separate video posted on X on Sunday showed what was estimated to be around 100 protestors outside of Tesla’s store in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which you can see below.

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Salt Lake City, Utah Supercharger graffiti

The aforementioned graffiti in Salt Lake City, Utah, to which Tesla has responded that it aims to press charges against the person who did this. Users also noticed a security camera in the background of the shot, footage from which could potentially be used to identify the vandal.

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Credit: @SnazzyLabs/X

Gothenburg, Sweden arson of Tesla vehicles

Two Tesla vehicles were set on fire in Gothenburg last Thursday, and authorities went on to arrest a suspected perpetrator, a 35-year-old, though he was later released. On Friday, two more Teslas had been torched around 8:00 p.m., and all four fires are being investigated in potential connection with each other.

Authorities later arrested and re-released the suspect again, though a fifth Tesla was later also started on fire, and they arrested him and kept him in custody. It’s not clear at the time of writing if authorities have been able to link the suspect to the crimes.

Loveland, Colorado arson and graffiti

In Loveland, Colorado, vandals repeatedly attempted to light the city’s Tesla store on fire in recent weeks, along with tagging X’s over vehicle windows and writing “Nazi cars,” on the location’s front windows.

Credit: crusadrpers0n | Reddit

Credit: CBS Colorado

Why are people targeting Tesla’s stores, vehicles, and chargers?

Last month, at U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Musk performed what many said appeared to be a Nazi salute, a gesture which multiple high-profile figures, including former Trump senior counselor and media executive Steve Bannon, have repeated in recent weeks. Many wrote the gesture off as an act of excitement and/or trolling, while others around the world have condemned the act.

Some Teslarati readers were also outraged following Musk’s appearance last month at a campaign event for the German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), in which he echoed thoughts on anti-immigration policy, the importance of “taking pride in Germany,” avoiding losing culture to “multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” and adding that there’s “too much of a focus on past guilt.”

Preliminary results show that the AfD lost the election over the weekend, coming in second to CDU/CSU’s Friedrich Merz, but the party also garnered its largest result in history and doubled votes from the previous election, according to leader Alice Weidel.

Other readers have defended Musk’s actions at the inauguration and the appearance at AfD’s campaign event, as well as his recent work under the Trump administration’s government efficiency department.

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Musk was also defended by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and others following the salute and appearance, and his recent work for the U.S. government.

Tesla stores are also being protested because of Musk’s recent involvement in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been gutting several federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, and expected plans to target the Department of Education.

DOGE has been hit with several lawsuits over the actions taken in the past few weeks, though it’s not clear if the massive federal cuts will be found lawful. The administration has also demonized judges and the judicial branch generally in recent weeks, with Trump saying in a post on X earlier this month that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

What are your thoughts? Has your vehicle, local store are charger been targeted by vandalism or protests? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

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Zach is a renewable energy reporter who has been covering electric vehicles since 2020. He grew up in Fremont, California, and he currently lives in Colorado. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, KRON4 San Francisco, FOX31 Denver, InsideEVs, CleanTechnica, and many other publications. When he isn't covering Tesla or other EV companies, you can find him writing and performing music, drinking a good cup of coffee, or hanging out with his cats, Banks and Freddie. Reach out at zach@teslarati.com, find him on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor

Published

15 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Thursday night to deny a ridiculous rumor regarding the sale of the company’s Chinese vehicle production plant, Gigafactory Shanghai.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, claimed in a scathing new report that Tesla was exploring a potential sale of the entire China business in an effort to help bolster a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk immediately denied the rumor not once but twice, initially calling it “fake news,” and then calling it “absurdly fake news” in a separate post just a few moments later:

The original poster of the Wall Street Journal article that Musk saw deleted the initial post sharing the headline and the rumored sale of Tesla’s China business.

The report seemed absolutely and unequivocally false to begin with; Tesla’s business in China is among the most important pieces of the company’s business. Not only does the factory supply vehicles for the domestic market, but also for various other markets in Asia and Europe.

China is also one of the largest automotive markets in the world, and Tesla has performed well there despite the robust competition.

The speculation regarding a Tesla and SpaceX merger has started to gain steam this year as the space exploration company went public just a month ago. There has been speculation that Musk will bridge all of his companies under one “umbrella company,” and analysts believe this could happen before the end of the decade.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

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This is the latest iteration of Musk’s very evident war on mainstream media. Reports regarding any of Musk’s companies are quick to get the dreaded “false” or “fake news” response from the CEO when they are unfounded.

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Elon Musk

Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

Published

22 hours ago

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July 31, 2026

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

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Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years

Published

2 days ago

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July 30, 2026

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Daniel Oberhaus, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.

Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.

Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.

He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.

This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:

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This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.

Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.

Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.

But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.

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