Four Tesla Cybertrucks burned overnight in a lot near 4th Avenue and Spokane Street in Seattle. The lot serves as a temporary storage space for Teslas arriving from overseas before they are sent to dealerships.
This incident comes after a series of attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities across the country since the Trump inauguration. Elon Musk, an early investor, board member, and current CEO of Tesla, has taken a role in the Trump administration.
These attacks have ranged from graffiti and vandalism at dealerships to arson and reports of gunfire at Tesla locations, including a recent incident in Portland.
While covering the story for Seattle’s Morning News, a man approached KIRO Newsradio’s Luke Duecy and pulled out what appeared to be a knife.
“He decided to come up to me right before I came on air and tried to get me to leave, essentially. And then I told him “No.” And that’s when I saw this person reach in the back behind like a belt or something and pull something metallic out underneath, and I went “oh,” and there were unfortunately a lot of bad language between the two of us.
“That was a scary moment as well. But you know, obviously someone does not want us to be here and to show these vehicles, but that’s in fact what we’re doing.”
I’m all for fighting back, but are we just giving him insurance money and taking out cars that he now doesn’t have to try to sell. I’d rather see them rusting at the car lot, selling for $15k because they’re stuck with so much inventory.
I don’t understand why people seem to think insurance is some kind of “get out of a bad situation free” product. Sure, Elmo might get the wholesale price back, but he’s still going to lose out on the earnings from the car, cuz they probably won’t give full sale price, and definitely won’t give him compensation for lost fees and financing or interest that comes along with a real purchase.
And in top of that, the more of these attacks that happen, the more insurance companies are going to see Tesla as uninsurable due to the amount of risk insuring them will bring with the hate he’s generating, and will make dealerships and lots have to spend more on security and risk losing out on space due to these attacks on top of increasing premium costs.
I’m not advocating that people burn down Tesla’s and Tesla dealerships, but one of the best ways to hurt a company long term is to fuck with their insurance. It’s seen as a mandatory product for most businesses, and you can break a budget if premiums suddenly increase.
This is unambiguously a good thing. All of this is negative press is affecting reputation. People torching cars and chargers keeps the bad press in the news. Protest is supposed to be disruptive.
In the grand scheme of things the money from the sale of the cars is relatively insignificant to his wealth.
The stock price dropping hurts him a lot more, and “people don’t want to buy the cars” is better for the price than “people actively hate the company”.
He’s also going to have an increasingly difficult time getting the insurance to pay the sales price of the car when it won’t sell.
He’s also going to have much more expensive insurance premiums when the insurer catches on that Cybertrucks are statistically so much more likely to be damaged by vandalism.
Exactly, if you really want to stick it to him then don’t torch his product, torch him instead