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In the early morning hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, a person wearing a long black cloak and face mask wheeled a cart down an Oregon sidewalk. He was headed toward a Tesla showroom in Salem, and his cart appeared to be loaded with molotov cocktails, according to court documents. One by one, he took out the handmade explosives, lit them on fire and lobbed them at the glass-walled dealership.
By the time Salem police arrived, the showroom window was shattered, a fire was burning on the sidewalk out front, a nearby Tesla sedan was ablaze and the alleged vandal had fled. The whole scene was caught by security footage, according to an affidavit from a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The showroom’s general manager estimated $500,000 in damages, with seven vehicles struck and one completely destroyed.
Bottom: A damaged Tesla dealership Photograph: Salem Police Department
The vandalism incident is one of dozens to hit Tesla dealerships, cars and the electric vehicle maker’s charging stations across the country since Trump took office. Many bear explicit messages protesting against Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and a senior adviser to the president. Musk is the head of the unofficial so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and has made it his prerogative to overhaul the federal government – ordering the firing of tens of thousands of employees, slashing agency budgets and eliminating entire departments. His hardline approach, which takes aim at institutions including the National Weather Service, the Department of Education and the Social Security Administration, has elicited backlash and criticism nationwide.
Thousands have attended peaceful protests at Tesla showrooms in cities and towns across the country. In the 54-odd days since the inauguration, those protests have grown from a handful of people in cities like San Francisco chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Elon Musk has got to go” to massive demonstrations across the US replete with live bands, Musk-as-Hitler costumes and heavy police presence. They have also crossed the Atlantic, with demonstrations occurring in the UK and Germany.
As the protests have multiplied, so has vandalism against Tesla’s brick-and-mortar business and individual vehicles. The Guardian has tracked at least three separate incidents involving molotov cocktails, the coordinated theft of nearly 50 Tesla tires and spray-painted swastikas on Tesla facilities from New York to New Mexico. Nearly 20 Tesla showrooms and charging stations have seen deliberate fires set, while dozens of owners have had their cars egged, pooped on and hit with Kraft cheese singles.
Like the protests, the defacement and destruction of Tesla facilities has also gone international, with sedans and Cybertrucks targeted in at least five other countries. In France, authorities in Toulouse reported that a dozen cars were torched at a Tesla showroom earlier this month. Another showroom in the Netherlands was graffitied with slogans such as “fuck off fascist” and others that called Musk a Nazi. One vandal as far away as Tasmania wrote “do you really want to drive a swasticar” across a dealership window.
Musk and Tesla did not return requests for comment. In response to a police report of Tesla vandalism in Massachusetts, Musk posted on X, “Damaging the property of others, aka vandalism, is not free speech!” Musk also reposted an interview with Valerie Costa, an organizer of the nonviolent Tesla Takedown demonstrations, and accused her of “committing crimes”.
Trump said earlier this week that he would label the violence against Tesla showrooms as domestic terrorism as he stood next to Musk in front of the White House. “I’m going to put a stop to it,” Trump said. “Because they’re harming a great American company.”
A day later, the House speaker Mike Johnson boosted the proposed designation. “Congress will investigate the sources of these attacks and help the DOJ & FBI ensure those responsible are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Johnson posted on X, the social media platform Musk owns.
Musk thanked Johnson on X, adding both a salute and American flag emoji.
Hurling molotovs and firing semi-automatics
In Salem, one month after the suspect first hurled molotov cocktails at the Tesla dealership, he returned. This time he came armed with what police believe to be a semi-automatic rifle.
At around 4am, surveillance footage shows him firing multiple rounds into the empty Tesla showroom, once again shattering windows and hitting a car parked inside the building. Investigators collected bullet fragments, logged surveillance video and sent the leftover molotov cocktails to an FBI lab in Alabama for fingerprint dusting. No one was injured.
ATF agents believe both incidents are linked to Salem resident Adam Lansky, who has been apprehended and charged. Lansky’s lawyer did not return a request for comment.
In the small Colorado town of Loveland, police rushed to a Tesla showroom in response to a report of a fire burning by a Cybertruck on 29 January. Underneath the vehicle, they found a spent molotov cocktail.
As with the Salem incident, the suspect in the Loveland case returned to the scene, according to court documents. Four days later, the word “Nazi” was spray painted on the dealership’s sign. Over the following weeks, the showroom was targeted three more times with molotov cocktails and graffiti. Lucy Grace Nelson, a resident from a nearby town, was charged for the series of incidents. Her lawyer declined to comment on the case.
Police in North Charleston, South Carolina, are also investigating a vandal who threw a molotov cocktail at a Tesla charging station earlier this week, setting both it and himself on fire and forcing officials to cut the station’s power. The words “long live the Ukraine” were spray painted in red on the pavement next to the charging stations, according to the Associated Press. The incident came after Trump rolled back US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, a move that Musk embraced.
Deliberate fires have also been set at Tesla showrooms and charging stations throughout the US without molotovs. Earlier this month, in Littleton, Massachusetts, seven Tesla charging stations were set ablaze in one night, according to CBS. Police found the first station thick with dark smoke and flames. Fires were also set at a Tesla facility in rural New Mexico and in an electric vehicle holding lot in Seattle, Washington, this week.
The Seattle fire department told the Guardian it found four Cybertrucks engulfed in flames when it arrived on the scene at around 11pm last Sunday. Local news station Komo News flew a drone over the wreckage and filmed one Cybertruck reduced to “little more than a charred hunk of metal”. Another was so badly burned that the windows melted, according to Komo. The Seattle police declined to comment because the investigation is ongoing.
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Reports of spray painted Teslas, showrooms and charging stations are rampant across the country. In Salt Lake City, swastikas and the word “Nazi” were found at both a Tesla Service Center and a separate charging station, according to local police. Black swastikas were also painted on a charging station in the small mountain town of Meyers in California. In Ithaca, New York, along with swastikas, “Hail Hitler” and “Tesla is Fascist” were emblazoned on the superchargers.
At a Tesla facility in Lynnwood, Washington, vandals targeted a cluster of six Cybertrucks but left other vehicles there untouched.
“I observed red spray paint on each of the cyber trucks,” reads a police report from Lynnwood obtained by the Guardian. “The graffiti wrote ‘Fuck Elon’ and a multitude of swastikas were spray painted onto the body panels of the vehicles.”
Egged, spray painted and pooped on
Some vandals have opted for incapacitating Musk’s cars rather than destroying them. In League City, Texas, 44 wheels were stolen off cars in an overflow parking lot for a Tesla dealership. The lot was hit on two separate occasions, with a total of 13 vehicles damaged. Jose Ortega, a spokesman for the League City police, said the case is inactive due to a lack of leads. Nearby surveillance cameras weren’t recording and “the cameras on the Teslas were not active since they were powered off”, Ortega said.
Much of the vandalism targeting Teslas involves minor, less destructive methods than molotov cocktails and spray paint. Tesla owners around the country have had their cars plastered with anti-Musk stickers and flyers, as well as hit with eggs and dog feces.
The owner of a golden Cybertruck in Southborough, Massachusetts, discovered that someone had put a “Nazis fuck off” sticker on his bumper last month, he told local media. Elsewhere in Massachusetts, police in Brookline arrested a 39-year-old man earlier this month and charged him with six counts of defacing property over allegedly putting stickers depicting Musk giving a fascist-style salute on people’s cars.
Other Tesla drivers have seen their vehicles pelted with foodstuffs, including a Maryland woman who told the Washington Post that her car was hit with around a dozen eggs while she was driving home. In Dallas, Texas, a man had Kraft singles thrown at his Tesla.
Vandalism incidents can turn into viral social media content, like a post on X, viewed 25m times, that showed a Cybertruck in Brooklyn, New York, covered in broken eggs and dog feces. One TikTok that received over 700,000 views showed a man weaponizing the administrative state against a Tesla vehicle: he called a parking attendant when he saw a Cybertruck allegedly parked in a loading zone in hopes of getting it ticketed or towed.
The fears of vandalism and questions over what to do about their car’s association with Musk have become hot topics of discussion in online communities dedicated to Tesla. A thread started last month about “dealing with anti-Tesla sentiment” on Tesla Motors Club, an independent online forum for Tesla owners, received over 400 replies until it was closed to further posts. Bumper stickers that state “I bought this before Elon went crazy” are now widely available online and have been spotted on Teslas around the country. Other social media posts show people trying to disguise their Teslas by changing their hood and bumper ornaments to mimic brands like Honda or Toyota. Some Tesla owners are selling their vehicles at a loss to rid themselves of the stigma.
Police have also been seen guarding Cybertrucks and dealerships during demonstrations. A widely shared TikTok video taken last week during the New York City Women’s March showed a group of New York police department officers surrounding a Cybertruck parked on the street while a protester held a “no to Tesla” sign up behind them. Crowds at a Mardi Gras celebration earlier this month in New Orleans booed a Cybertruck and hurled beads at its windows, forcing it off a parade route as police attempted to shield it from harm.
The wave of vandalism doesn’t seem to be ebbing. Back in Loveland, Colorado, almost two weeks after Nelson was arrested for lobbing molotov cocktails at the Tesla showroom, the same facility was targeted on 7 March, just after midnight.
Using an incendiary device, someone ignited a fire between two Teslas and threw rocks at the showroom – breaking windows and damaging several cars. No injuries were reported and police say the incident doesn’t appear to be connected to Nelson, the prior suspect. Loveland’s police chief dubbed the act “copycat behavior”.
