There are few absolute observations you can make about people and politics.
And one of those might just be this: If you can afford to take a $4,000 to $10,000 loss selling your Tesla so you can make a statement then you probably shouldn’t be squawking about how the high price of eggs is putting a crimp in your budget.
Making a statement with your car can be an expensive undertaking.
The average price of used Teslas on the resale market, according to iSeeCars, has plunged 21 percent in the 12-month period ending last August.
By comparison, all other electric vehicles dropped an average of 1.4 percent with some specific models manufactured by legacy auto producers such as the Ford Mustang EV increasing slightly on the resale market.
Long before Musk’s middle initials became Elon “DOGE” Musk, there were clear signs the Tesla nameplate with its gravity defying valuation was coming back down to earth.
Perhaps what’s most telling about the current rage at the (Cybertruck) machine, isn’t the politics involved.
It is the fact Americans are still making statements with their cars.
For more than a few, apparently owning a Tesla wasn’t as much a decision made based on transportation needs, cost, value, and doing the right thing for the environment as it was to driving a billboard.
Unfortunately, a small vocal and destructive handful are engaged in defacing and damaging said billboards. Everyone driving a Tesla, in the reptilian eyes of said people, are automatically DOGE disciples.
Maybe manufacturing a “Kool-Aid” red Tesla, filling the freeways and byways with rolling MAGA colored machines was what Musk had in mind all along.
More telling, however, is how some Tesla buyers are treating what for most people would be the highest or second highest purchase they will make after a house not as transportation but as an extension of their politics.
That’s fine.
But the small but growing postings on social media of people dumping their Teslas borderline whining about the financial hit they are taking demonstrates there are deeper class divisions along money lines in the United States than most assume.
Do not misunderstand.
There is nothing morally bankrupt about people spending money on a new car that many can’t afford even with a tax credit.
And dumping their Tesla as a statement against the politics of Elon Musk is fine. It is a free country.
But the outrage spoken by some that how dare Musk go blue to red on the political spectrum begs the question.
Would they have refused to have bought a Tesla in the first place if Musk had been aligned with Trump at the time?
Would they have fought the government extending Tesla tax credits to build factories and then offer tax credits to buyers to subsidize the purchase and indirectly benefit Tesla if Musk had made it clear if he had the opportunity he’d take a chain saw to big government?
The very government, one might add, that rigged the playing field so Tesla could benefit immensely from the green mandate.
Situational politics, is just like situational ethics.
Those who couldn’t stomach politicians picking winners and losers with the tax code that helped create the tech Godzillas of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg now look upon them as saviors.
Meanwhile, those that pushed for and/or defended using government to transfer wealth to create green giants at the expense of other entrepreneurs are trying to cut down the beanstalk they helped create.
Corporate welfare, if you will, is OK only if those receiving it kowtow to an ideological line that whoever controls the purse strings holds as being absolute.
It is doubtful that those intent on shedding anything in their possession that can be connected with Musk are going to really care too much about taking a financial hit by selling their Tesla for political reasons.
But if they don’t want to take a severe financial drubbing they might want to do so before Hertz unloads some 20,000 of its EVs, most of which are Teslas.
Hertz is trading them out for gas powered vehicles.
The backstory is not as much about customer demand as it is the high cost of repair when it comes to Teslas and other EVs when they get in a collision.
Hertz data shows EVs cost about twice as much as gas powered vehicles to repair after a collision.
Some of it has to do with how they are constructed. Some of it has to do with the availability of parts.
At any rate, another 20,000 Teslas being dumped on the resale market when the demand for new vehicles that are battery powered has softened isn’t good news for someone looking to somehow “hurt” Musk and/or Tesla.
Money, they may argue, isn’t the point.
But in all honestly, it is the point.
The vast majority of the EV market hasn’t been driven by the working class. Even with tax credits, most couldn’t afford to buy a new Tesla or almost all other EVs.
One might surmise the slump that is making Tesla the least expensive EV on the resale market in the United States would open the door to lower income households going with a used EV.
However, what Hertz is discovering with securing parts and the price of repairs it may still make ownership of EVs too steep of a financial hill for many to climb.
Everyone has an opinion about Elon Musk these days.
But then again, most of us had opinions about him long before the high profile bro act started.
You might disagree with what Musk is doing in DC but there is one thing for sure.
Making a political statement with a bumper sticker is a heck of a lot cheaper than doing it with a Tesla whether it is buying it or unceremoniously dumping it in a fit of political rage.
