‘I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy’: Tesla owners distance themselves from brand

It's been a tough week for electric vehicle drivers in Alberta, but it's not the recent deep freeze that has some owners second-guessing their Teslas.

It was a tough week for people who drive electric vehicles in Alberta amid the deep freeze, but it’s not just their batteries needing a recharge.

Support for the Tesla brand is also cooling.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump and recent actions, including a controversial salute, have become sticking points for some owners.

Some are even going out of their way to show they don’t support the tech billionaire with bumper stickers that read, “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.”

Matthew Hiller with Mad Puffer Stickers creates the stickers out of the U.S. and said they have soared in popularity ever since Trump’s inauguration.

“We’re talking about 500 sales per day,” he said.

Hiller said a lot of those shipments are headed north, with Canada and Norway dominating orders over the past two weeks.

“Ever since (Musk’s) salute, it has taken on a whole new life,” he said. “I’ve probably sold it to 35 different countries now.”

Activists projected Musk’s hand gesture, which many criticized for its similarities to Nazi salutes, onto a Tesla plant in Germany.

Musk later posted on X, the social media platform the billionaire owns, “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

The number of newly registered Teslas declined in Germany nearly 60 per cent in January.

Several factors contributed to the decline, in addition to the drop in sales in the U.K. and France, but experts say the public’s souring sentiment toward Musk is also playing a role.

“He’s an image of oligarchy; he’s an image of concentration of wealth into the hands of select players, which is not a good sign for democracy,” said Charles-Étienne Beaudry, the author of Radio Trump: How He Won The First Time.

Beaudry said boycotting X, Starlink or Tesla can send a strong message.

“People in Germany are not happy he’s supporting the far right, the AFD (Alternative For Germany), which is proposing some extreme ideology there,” he said.

“We can push for a general boycott of these companies because this will lower the value of stocks, this will make less profits and this might have a great impact, but we need to stay united.”

At an electric vehicle charging station in Calgary, drivers weren’t interested in a boycott but said they try to separate the car from the creator.

“No regrets for the vehicle; I think the CEO is a bit of an idiot, but that’s why we don’t purchase our goods based on their corporate executives, do we? We base them on their function,” said Chris Hopkinson, who has owned his Tesla since 2019.

“If I just speak objectively about the car, it’s an excellent product. It’s a great car but if you’re going to talk about the owner, that’s a different story,” said Hussain Syed.

“I definitely have some conflicting opinions of Elon Musk. I think as a visionary and business owner, he is transforming the world,” said Campbell Lai.

Tesla raised its prices in Canada on Feb. 1, which coincided with the date Trump originally had planned to bring in tariffs on Canadian goods.

Andrew Bell with the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta said Ottawa should take this as a sign to look to other markets and lift the tariffs on EVs from China.

“We’ve got mineral resources that China wants to work with. They’ve already got the infrastructure to make this happen. They’re already doing it with other countries around the world; why can’t Canada get involved?” he said.

Tesla does not release sales figures for Canada, but rebate data from Transport Canada’s zero-emission vehicle program suggests about 33,000 Teslas received rebates in the nine months to Dec. 31.

On a per-month basis, that is down about 15 per cent compared to the approximately 50,000 Teslas that received the rebates in the full 2023-24 fiscal year.