Matt Hiller has been selling stickers denouncing Elon Musk for some time. But he noticed a huge uptick in sales right around the US election. In fact, "the day after the election was the biggest day ever," the Hawaii-based Hiller tells the Guardian. "People saw a billionaire supervillain buy his way into the [Trump] administration and it rubbed them the wrong way." According to Benzinga, Musk's endorsement of President-elect Trump, following his promotion of far-right conspiracies on X, "may have been the final straw for some Tesla owners," who now appear to be buying up hundreds of anti-Musk stickers each day. Some of the bestselling ones read, "Anti Elon Tesla Club" and "I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy."
It's possible drivers of other vehicles are buying these stickers to slap on random Teslas. But the Guardian speaks to various Tesla owners who say the association with Musk, Tesla's CEO, turns them off. "I'm embarrassed driving this car around after the election, thinking about the man behind it," says one who bought an "Anti Elon Tesla Club" magnet for her vehicle. "There was a time I thought Elon Musk was a genius but he went bad very quickly," says another. Tesla remains the most popular electric car company in the US, though its sales are expected to fall 7% year-over-year this quarter due in part to increased competition.
In a report from July, Bloomberg noted "ambivalent Tesla owners, put out by either Musk's trolling social media persona or his politics, or some combination of the two" were turning to Rivian's electric vehicles and becoming huge fans. "Elon is Tesla: his persona definitely has an impact upon the perception of the brand, and he has been polarizing," Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, tells the Guardian. But "I don't think we've seen any impacts in sales because of this—yet," she says. "It remains to be seen which consumers he attracts and which he loses." (More Elon Musk stories.)
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