The definitive story of Tesla Takedown

On a sun April afternoon in Seattle, about 40 activists gathered at the Pine Box, a beer and a pizza in the sometimes scruffy Capitol Hill neighborhood. The group had reserved a side room attached to the external patio; Before the observations began, the participants flowed inside and outside, enjoying the hot day. Someone set up an audio system. So the activists settled, striving their ears while the streaming call creak through speakers far from perfect.

In more than a decade of climate organization, it was the first time that Emily Johnston, one of the group leaders, had participated in a Happy Hour to listen to the quarterly call of a company. Even the first time that a local television station showed up to cover a Happy Hour. “All this campaign was only a magnet for attention,” he says.

The group, officially called Planagrane, was awarded immediately. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, started the request for investors for the first quarter of 2025 with a lateral recognition exactly of the work done by the group in the last two months. He called the repercussions nationally to the so-called Department of Government’s efficiency, or Doge, an effort to cut the government expenditure managed by young technology enthusiasts and ex-studies of the Musk Company, appointed, with a typical Muskian muskian flourishing, for a 2010 meme.

“Now, the protests you will see out there, are very organized, are paid,” Musk said to the listeners. For weeks, thousands of people, including the plants, have camped out of the Tesla showrooms, service centers and charging stations. Musk suggested that not only were paid for their time, but were interested only in his work because they had once received a “expensive generosity” from the federal government. Musk had Presented The theory and sharpened it on its social media platform for weeks. Now, he claimed, the demonstrators were out of the dole and furious.

Musk did not offer any proof of his statements; For a person, every demonstrator who spoke with Wired insisted on the fact that they are not paid and are exactly what they seem to be: people who are angry with Elon Musk. They call their movement the “Tesdown of Tesla”.

Before Musk came into invitation to speak with investors, Tesla, who probably started a multi -dollar effort to move on to global electricity cars, had presented them to them one of the worst quarterly financial relationships of the company over the years. Net income fell 71 % year on year; The revenue decreased by over $ 2 billion from Wall Street’s expectations.

Now, in Seattle, only the first minutes of Musk’s observations have left the participants, many veterans of the climatic movement, Giddy. Someone close to the StreticTicy speakers repeated the best parts of the small crowd: “I think that starting next month, May, my allocation of the time to Doge will fall significantly,” Musk said. Under a rotating disco ball, people screamed and applauded. Someone supported a snapshot of Tesla’s equity performance in the last year, a jagged but falling black line.

“If you’ve ever wanted to know that the protest is important, here is your test,” Johnston recalled weeks later.

Tesla’s Takedown, an effort to hit Musk and his wealth where he hurts, seems to have appeared at the right time. Tesla Skeptics has supported for years that the company, which has the highest market capitalization of any car manufacturer, is overrated. They argue that the company’s CEO has been able to distract from the imperfect fundamentals: a range of elderly vehicles, a cybertuck sales flop, the very delayed introduction of autonomous-driving technology-with stakes and showmanships.