Musk left the White House, but Tesla protesters aren't done

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

- NEAL BOUDETTE

Elon Musk left the Trump administration with a White House send-off on May 30. That was a victory of sorts for a group of activists who have spent much of the past four months organising protests against Mr Musk’s right-wing politics by targetting his electric car company, Tesla.

A day later, on Saturday, hundreds of people showed up at more than 50 Tesla showrooms and other company locations to continue their protests.

The campaign at Tesla sites began in February after Joan Donovan, a sociology professor at Boston University, gathered friends to hold a demonstration at a Tesla showroom in Boston, and posted a notice about her plan on Bluesky using the hashtag #TeslaTakedown. She said she had been inspired by a small protest at Tesla’s electric vehicle chargers in Maine soon after President Trump's inauguration.

“That first one on Feb 15 was me and like 50 people,” Ms Donovan said. “And then the next week it was a hundred more people, and then a hundred more after that, and it’s just grown.”

Tesla Takedown has since expanded into an international movement, staging demonstrations at Tesla factories, showrooms and other locations in countries including Australia, Britain, France and Germany as well as across the United States. The campaign’s US growth has been fuelled in large part by anger over Mr Musk's leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), which has slashed government spending and dismissed tens of thousands of federal workers while gaining access to sensitive personal data.