I have spent most of my career arguing that the auto industry is inherently political and that ignoring politics as an enthusiast is to risk all sorts of negative outcomes. Bans on imported cars and unreasonable limits on aftermarket tuning are just two of the ways that politicians who don’t understand our hobby have tried to harm it in the last few years. Now, though, the opposite has happened. Cars are explicitly political in a way that’s unavoidable.
It’s a real monkey’s paw situation here at The Morning Dump today as people are starting to agree with me that cars are explicitly political but in a way that’s more extreme and less fun than I could have predicted. Yesterday, the President of the United States declared a boycott against Tesla to be illegal. He said today he’s going to purchase a Tesla “as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk” after Tesla’s stock had a bad week.
I very much see cars as a hobby that can bring people of disparate views and backgrounds together. That’s what I see this place as, so I try to be careful not to alienate anyone by only highlighting my views. It’s why this particular moment in time is interesting as a journalist and confounding as an enthusiast.
Tesla had an awful day yesterday in the markets, partially as everyone woke up to the fact that Chinese consumers aren’t going to default to buying Model Ys, and just to compound things, one of the company’s newest competitors is also going to build robots. While we’re doing this, let’s just rip off the bandaid and talk about congestion pricing. It’s become another local issue that is now a national political football, although it seems like people who live in New York are fine with it.
And, just to wrap it up, Ford is going to keep dumping money into Germany as it struggles to make ground in the European market.
The Ed Begley, Jr. Effect Is Real
If you’re a new urbanist or an environmentalist, buying a car has always been political, driving is political, really everything you do as a consumer, in a zero-sum view of the world, is political. The environmental activism of the Clinton Era shifted its focus from the hole in the Ozone layer to global warming, which led to a cry for electric cars, making them political in a way they hadn’t really been before.
GM was the first to really answer the call in a consumer-facing way with the GM EV1. This early EV was heralded by celebrities of the lefty California green variety (California being one of the few places you could lease one). In particular, the actor Ed Begley, Jr. became sort of the face of Hollywood environmentalism. It’s why, when GM decided to take back all the EV1s and destroy them, he even hosted a funeral for the car.
After that point, Begley, Jr. would go on to promote a bunch of other electric cars, including the RAV4. It’s no surprise, then, that when Tesla came out with the first Roadster, the company and its CEO Elon Musk got a lot of support from that same community. Begley, Jr. called his Model S the “best car I’ve ever owned” and even drove it cross-country.
There’s been plenty written about Elon Musk joining the Republican Party, though there’s been some cognitive dissonance required to square a President who seemed fairly anti-EV being embraced by the biggest maker of electric cars in the world. The last few weeks, the dissonance has grown unavoidable.
People have stopped buying Teslas for many reasons, but some of them are likely political. Police are now having to guard Tesla facilities in order to avoid the kind of vandalism that has turned Tesla facilities and owners into a target. I asked last week how much goodwill Tesla could afford to lose, and we’re about to find out.
The “left” has found an easy target in Musk, whose companies benefit from valuations far outsized to their actual earnings. Activists, like unofficial Musk biographer Ed Niedermeyer, have focused on an approach summed up by the #TeslaTakedown hashtag, which includes protests at Tesla service centers.
Yesterday was mostly a bad day for stocks, as the market seemed to react to President Trump’s assertion that maybe a little recession is necessary to make things better (President Trump called it a “period of transition”). Tesla did massively worse as a stock, dropping to $222 at close, which erased all of the bump the company got from the election. There seems to be a lift this morning, but whether that’s a real bounce or a dead cat bounce is anyone’s guess.
The President didn’t wait for the market to open today. Here’s what he said yesterday on Truth Social (Twitter/X was down a lot of yesterday, but it’s still funny that the President saves his more important posts for Truth Social):
To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is “putting it on the line” in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s “baby,” in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 Presidential Ballot Box, but how did that work out? In any event, I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American. Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???
First of all, it’s definitely illegal to get together with your friends and to decide to damage property. That’s how the law works. To some, though, this is more like a Boston Tea Party-like movement, wherein attacking a commercial entity connected to a political one makes a bigger point. Honestly, I’m surprised that no one has dumped a Tesla into the Boston Harbor yet. Other people see this as vandalism. And while vandalism is obviously illegal, just getting together with your friends and boycotting a car company sure seems like free speech to me.
This is weird, though, right? President Trump’s own right-wing movement in this country has been vehemently against electric cars and has even attacked electric car owners. But now he’s going to buy, I presume, a Cybertruck and tell other people to buy electric cars?
It’s clearly weighing on Musk a bit, who talked to Fox host Larry Kudlow in an interview about this yesterday. Kudlow asked him how he stayed on top of DOGE and his businesses, to which Musk replied, sighing, “With great difficulty.”
I have my own political beliefs that are not hard to find or, really, hard to intuit. One of my strongest beliefs, and this is a non-partisan one (I hope), is that we all do better when we can all communicate. The last few years have seen a Balkanization of thought, with people breaking off into little groups without much contact with the outside world. I don’t think that helps. If we can talk about cars on a level playing field, maybe we can talk about other things without the immediate anger or judgment that has made political conversation so hard.
There are other car websites that are very good at making it clear you’re not welcome if you don’t share their politics, and that’s totally fine for them. Some of the people who write for those sites have been critical of me for not doing the same. That’s valid criticism, but I just think an approach that tells a lot of people to go to hell isn’t going to change many minds. This country won’t get better with one side overwhelmingly prevailing over the other.
If you put crabs in a bucket, you don’t need to put a lid on it, because the other crabs will always pull down any crab that tries to get away. That’s a terrible way to live and I, for one, choose not to live that way.
[Ed Note: Just to state it explicitly: We welcome Democrats, Republicans, and everyone else to The Autopian, both as readers and writers. -DT].
Xpeng Is Going To Do Robots
Car companies, which rely on robots to make cars, love making humanoid ones. Honda had ASIMO, GM had Robonaut, and Tesla has Optimus. While Tesla saw its stock fall yesterday, Xpeng had the opposite happen as it announced it would be building humanoid robots and flying cars. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the company has also seen its sales grow instead of shrink in China.
“Xpeng shares have got a lift this year from its improving monthly sales figures, demonstrating to investors that its product strategy are working well despite intense competition,” said Steven Leung, executive director at UOB Kay Hian Hong Kong Limited. While the company’s latest updates on flying cars and humanoid robots could boost sentiment, “it’s still distant for those projects to translate into earnings contributions.”
FYI, we’re also doing robots. The Autopian is doing robots. Become a member now! Robots!
New Yorkers Now Support Congestion Pricing
After much delay, the New York State/City plan to charge an extra toll to certain drivers going into lower Manhattan went into effect. This is called “Congestion pricing,” and the goal was to reduce the number of car trips into the city and increase revenue for transit.
It was a political hot button issue for all of a minute, until it went into effect and most people saw that it worked as promised. Now, for the first time, New Yorkers seem to be in support, with a new poll from Siena College (who will not win the MAAC Basketball Tournament) showing more support than opposition according to The NYC Streetsblog:
A new poll released Monday from Siena College found that more New York City residents approve of congestion pricing than don’t, a dramatic turnaround from a previous poll by the same firm.
Now, 42 percent of city residents told the pollsters that they think congestion pricing should stick around, despite the Trump administration’s attempt to end it, while only 35 percent of city voters think Trump should end it.
When Siena last asked about the toll in December, support for congestion pricing among city voters was underwater: Only 32 percent favored the poll and 56 percent opposed it.
The President called the plan “Dead” and the Secretary of Transportation is trying to stop it, saying:
“New York State’s congestion pricing plan is a slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. “Commuters using the highway system to enter New York City have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes. But now the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative, and instead, takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair. The program also hurts small businesses in New York that rely on customers from New Jersey and Connecticut. Finally, it impedes the flow of commerce into New York by increasing costs for trucks, which in turn could make goods more expensive for consumer. Every American should be able to access New York City regardless of their economic means. It shouldn’t be reserved for an elite few.”
The interesting thing about living in New York as a non-native is that I always had the impression that New York got a disproportionate amount of attention. Now that I’ve lived here for a while, I realize it’s just because we’re awesome and everyone is obsessed with us.
Ford Is Going To Try To Save German Operations
Everyone knows that Ford or Ford-associated companies have been involved in two of the greatest cars of all time, the Mazda Miata (out of Japan) and the Merkur XR4Ti (out of Germany). Oh, how far the mighty have fallen. Ford is now having to put $5 billion into the German branch of the company to keep it afloat:
Ford announced Monday that it will inject the money to support the ongoing transformation of its business in Europe and increase long-term competitiveness. The money will fund a plan to turn around Ford’s German subsidiary, Ford-Werke GmbH.
The Dearborn-based automaker has already made significant investments in its German operations in recent years, including a $2 billion upgrade of its plant in Cologne to produce electric vehicles.
Europe is a tough market now, though the possibility of Germany untightening a bit on spending is a sign that maybe things can turn around in the medium term. Hopefully, it’ll be just long enough to get a successor to the XR4Ti.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
While we’re still talking about great pop/indie acts from the early part of the 21st Century, I don’t think any song landed quite like “Time To Pretend” from MGMT did. It’s not “Yellow,” but it’s pretty good.
The Big Question
Was buying (or selling) your car a political decision?
Top photo: GM/Tesla
I purchase and drive older cars, and my reasons would be “political” to a lot of folks: I’m conservative about technology, fearful of surveillance, and I believe keeping a decent car running cleanly is a good alternative to scrapping it and manufacturing a new one.
But what’s actually political about my hooptie habit is that I can get away with it because of my complexion and social status.
It wouldn’t make much of a political statement because everyone would assume it just Full Self-Drove itself off a pier.
Most of the time, “political” just means “doesn’t implicitly agree with MY politics.”
Was burning (or destroying ) a car a political decision?
Society is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized.
Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims (that poor uhc ceo).
The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below.
It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
I don’t think burning a few Cybertrucks to the ground is enough. It’s not even a good start.
We’re gonna need a bigger fire pit.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
They are all villains.
I have no qualms about sticking tires on their shoulders and lighting them on fire.
For the better of society.
They wouldn’t think twice about doing the same to me.
Ol laminated face Musk has said it himself.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is
empathy.”
Maybe leave the cars out of it and just burn you plasti-dipped fucks at the top.
Apropos of precisely nothing to do with today’s TMD, this GIF popped up in the adverts. How am I supposed to concentrate on Matt’s content?
https://imageaws.popin.cc/ML/fa08b5b84802ae5dfe2afbbf67abb6bb__scv1__300x175.gif
I think we all need to take a chill pill with getting worked up about someone else’s car choice.
Find me a car manufacturer that doesn’t have some darkness in its past. I’m thinking we can all find something unseemly if we look hard enough.
For me, as a Model 3P Tesla owner, I genuinely thought it was a noble idea to do my part to lower my carbon footprint and go all in on EVs. I bought a Chevy Bolt too last year.. With my mostly urban driving habits, EVs make way too much sense. So far, almost two years in, I’m happy with my choices.
Now, of course, I’m told by by certain circles to ditch the Tesla because somehow a fair amount of people now think Musk is a Nazi, and by association, I must be one too.
The people who make these statements have absolutely no clue what Nazism was and is.
Musk is indeed a weirdo who makes awkward gestures and seemingly unhinged statements with some frequency. Do I think he’s a Nazi? Absolutely not. He’s never espoused Nazi statements or sentiments that I’ve ever seen. His recent awkward hand gesture, taken in context of the entire video sequence, show clearly he was in no way giving a Nazi salute.
The guy’s a goof, and admittedly on the autism spectrum, which explains some of his oddness.
I’ll keep driving my Tesla because I really enjoy driving it. Same with the Bolt.
What’s so ironic is that my more conservative friends gave me some grief about going rogue lefty when I bought the EVs.
Now I’m supposedly a Nazi. Go figure.
He very carefully and distinctly gave a Sieg Heil. He supports white nationalist political parties in several countries. His mixture of corporate and state power is practically the definition of fascism, which is to say Nazism.
Why are you here posting lies?
Just owning a Tesla does not make you a Nazi, but your clearly misleading and disingenuous post certainly might lead to that conclusion.
In 2025, I’m not worried about what Henry Ford did.
Musk is a concern today, right now. And if you think he’s just “a goof” “on the autism spectrum”, I hope you’re in the care of a court-mandated conservatorship.
This may be a polarizing statement in these trying times,
but ‘Time To Pretend’ was and is an S-tier banger.
Buying (or selling) a car has never been political for me. It’s been practical when necessary and emotional when I’ve got the practical covered. I bought my Mercedes because when I was a very poor kid, it’s what successful people drove. For me it was a symbol that I had achieved a measure of success. Yeah, I know it’s silly, but it’s also my truth. I bought my Maverick because it meets so many needs. It seats 4 fairly comfortably. It hauls mulch. It carries my kayak to the lake and my bike to the trails. It gets 40 mpg (hybrid). And it’s small enough that I don’t feel like I have to find a spot at the back of the parking lot. It was also inexpensive; I was out the door under $30K with a heated steering wheel. See – practical.
I don’t care for Teslas and I despise Dr. Evil. It would never occur to me to vandalize someone else’s property because of this. Don’t become what you hate.
My last car purchase was a 2021 Buick Envision. Nothing political, just a good deal on a used car. I waiting for the Clown Prince to tell me I have to crush it. Don’t think it couldn’t happen.
As a serious addendum to that Ed Note, we don’t welcome transphobia. We don’t like having to ban people, but cross the line and you’ll be zapped from these pages. We welcome all, but remember to be kind. 🙂
Sucks that this has to be said!
No reputable site worth giving clicks to would support or encourage or condone transphobia. Neither would any reputable commenter. Everybody’s a person, everybody has family.
It’s so sad that this has to be posted, but expected in today’s world. Stay strong.
Nope, it was a transaction.
I very much like that The Autopian is relatively politics free. There is way to much gotta win at all cost bs around today.
I wish Nissan well and hope they survive. Although it is going to be a long hard climb out from we’re they currently are.
I hope Ford is able to get its German mojo back as well.
I will muzzle myself on the topic of your President and Mr Musk as they both generate enough hot air and press to rival a California wildfire.
One thing that is not political in any way is people’s race.
Unfortunately, it’s something Musk has taken a strong stance against since taking office.
He has openly come out giving a repeated and deliberate Nazi salute to a throng of raving supporters.
He has now started posting pro-apartheid white supremacist propaganda on X. Musk is one of many whites who fled South Africa after apartheid ended, when South Africa declared blacks equal to whites.
His posts imply that he believes that giving black people equal human rights has ruined his beloved former white supremacist haven of South Africa.
Musk’s proud racism would be the most significant factor for a person of colour deciding whether or not to support him or Tesla.
How can we talk about the situation with Musk right now without mentioning these things to give context?
I am a car guy.
It takes some clear malevolence to make me look away from an otherwise attractive vehicle. Some vehicle were just plain stupid and designed to provoke (Hummer…H2 I’m looking at you). Some are way too goodie 2 shoes (earliest of Prius come to mind).
As an actual Tesla Model 3 leaser…I like the car…but will dump it in a heartbeat when the lease expires. Elon is not good for the US or the world…and adding more cash to his toybox is unthinkable.
Sometimes you can separate the art from the artist (I have not erased Thriller from my collation)…but Tesla…easy to do without and happy to make this decision a public statement.
Now I need to think about what that Merkur XR4Ti I’ve been eyeing says about politics…
Mundus sine caesaribus
“Was buying (or selling) your car a political decision?”
Never!, thou I’ve never bought New, or from a dealer. Never put stickers on my cars, nor signs in the yard. Never posted anything anywhere till here, and the clear and present danger that Trump represents. No one has done more damage to our country, and our world reputation.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
“A republic, if you can keep it”https://constitutioncenter.org/education/classroom-resource-library/classroom/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it
Was buying (or selling) your car a political decision?
No. First two cars were older American cars (1960s). Always had older dudes saying how “they don’t make them like that anymore” in a positive sense. The maintenance and quirks about cars of that era compared to what was current had me thinking to myself “and thank God they don’t” My 3rd car was a Mazda B2200 and I got some dirty looks from some of those same dudes. I don’t really care what they think. If the same dudes are around, I expect they would like my Pontiac and hate my Honda except the Honda was the one built in the US with US union labor.
The Pontiac is Australian.
Maybe the Sierra XR6 was a great car (and the Sierra Cosworth certainly was) but the Merkur XR4Ti was hugely disappointing. I was a previous owner of a Capri II (a car I loved) was looking for an upgrade from my Mustang GT. I wanted to love the XR4Ti and I went to the dealer ready to buy but it was just a really meh car. For the same money, the SVO Mustang was much more sporting and the Toyota Celica GTS was much more refined. I ended up buying the Celica.
It’s amazing that in just a couple years Musk has gone from being the darling of the typical green, lefty, Californian to a Nazi scumbag. All the while, right-wingers have forgotten about railing against the subsidies his company received for a decade. Cognitive dissonance is alive and well on both sides.
“It’s amazing that in just a couple years Musk has gone from being the darling of the typical green, lefty, Californian to a Nazi scumbag.”
Not so amazing when Musk started Sieg Heil’ing. At least here in Europe it’s definitely not just ‘lefties’ but normal ‘non-political’ people who are appalled by that and his ham-fisted attempts to influence local politics.
What’s also amazing is that the vocal Left thinks that everyone else thinks Elon is a Nazi. It’s a good jab at the guy, considering the whole dumb salute thing, but to believe he actually holds Nazi principles as truth? Nah, come on now.
The guy has been reposting and subtweeting white nationalist rhetoric for years now, wether or not he holds them as truth in his heart is irrelevant, he supports them with his actions
It’s actually very relevant. He can retweet bullshit all day long, big whoop. If he was an actual Nazi, he would have no gov’t contracts, no tax id#, heck, he would be banned from doing any business almost anywhere in the world.
The day that he says he is a Nazi, is the day you can call him one. Until then, he’s just a dude with an outwardly opposite stance on things compared to you. I suspect not everything, but probably most things.
That said, I have never asked him what his views are, and I doubt many people here have either. Call him a Nazi all you want, I guess. It would be inaccurate, though.
Agreed, I don’t really get what ‘Nazi’ principles people think he holds. I’m no fan of him personally but most of what he advocates for is basically the opposite of what Nazis did. The whole salute thing was just a guy on the spectrum who acts weird when he gets excited.
Doesn’t he support shitler?
Read up on how the Nazis came to power, Trump and Musk are running the proven fascism playbook. And Musk himself has been openly funding white supremacist German political parties.
He knew exactly what he was doing when he gave the sieg heil
The United States Office of Government Ethics rule on “Endorsing Organizations, Products or Persons” states that “Executive branch employees may not use their Government positions to suggest that the agency or any part of the executive branch endorses an organization (including a nonprofit organization), product, service, or person.”
Trump stepped over that ethics line again, like he did with Goya foods in his first term.
I do hope he convinces some of his more die hard followers to try EVs. I bought one in the winter of 2023 because it was a car I could actually get. Politics had nothing to do with it. My wife followed that summer because we loved the day to day simplicity of EV life. Once some of the “gasoline forever” crowd (David Freiburger excepted) tries an EV, hopefully they will realize that EV life can be better than ICE.
I like your Freiburger exception. He wants to keep old stuff running. That is recycling. Crusher Camaro anyone?
I agree in principle with what you’re saying and your point is spot on, however, the president is not an executive branch employee, he is an elected politician and not subject to those ethics rules. It’s a case of rules for thee, but not for me. Luckily we don’t need ethics rules to tell us when someone is stepping over the line like he consistently does. Not having codified rules doesn’t excuse a person for corruption.