On a brisk, sunny Saturday, Pam Gersh approached the Tesla service and sales center on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky. The smartly dressed, retired professional looked every bit a potential Tesla buyer, but Gersh wasn’t there for a test drive.
She clutched a handful of flyers bearing Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s likeness and the phrase, “I am stealing from you.” Gersh had come to join about three dozen other demonstrators on the sidewalk as part of a Take Down Telsa protest.
“I’m hoping that we can destroy his entire brand,” Gersh told Newsweek. Similar demonstrations have taken place at Tesla properties in more than 100 cities, according to organizers, to try to apply economic pressure against the world’s richest man.
Some demonstrators said they were protesting Musk’s support for authoritarianism and far-right groups, and his apparent Nazi salute at a Trump inauguration event. Some expressed concern that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was violating constitutional checks and balances by supplanting the role of Congress in spending decisions. Others called Musk a hypocrite for cutting federal services and jobs while his companies benefit from lucrative government contracts.
Jeff Young
Gersh voiced many of those complaints and added a more personal one. Her son, Mason Gersh, was a five-year employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development and was fired when USAID was eliminated on Musk’s recommendation.
“We’re pretty devastated as a family,” Gersh said, describing the years of savings for higher education that went into her son’s career delivering humanitarian aid. “It’s all gone because some DOGE teenager pushed a button and deleted his life.”
USAID’s work included programs to help less-developed countries adapt to impacts from climate change and adopt clean energy. Other cuts driven by Musk’s DOGE team have sharply reduced staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and eliminated climate science positions at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Local demonstration organizer Joel Hunt told Newsweek that the Tesla demonstrations are a way to highlight the gulf between Musk’s actions and the EV company’s climate-friendly image.
“In terms of environmentally conscious car buyers, Tesla has ruined its own market by being owned by somebody who is going to repel people that are interested in buying those kinds of vehicles,” Hunt said. “Who is now the market for Tesla?”
Staff in the Tesla facility told Newsweek they were not authorized to comment, and Tesla’s corporate press office did not respond to a request for comment.
Across the country in Portland, Oregon, Cassandra Peterson staged her own one-person protest last weekend by donating her Tesla to NPR and having it towed away.
Peterson is better known by her former stage persona, the camp-horror character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She joined the growing list of celebrities who are publicly tossing Tesla aside.
Peterson said she stopped dressing as Elvira a few years ago, but she came up with a different costume to bid farewell to her Tesla. Peterson hoisted a chainsaw while wearing a blazer over a T-shirt, black shades and a black cap, as Musk did at a recent event. Her cap, however, read “Make America Goth Again.”
“When Tesla came out, I was in love with that car because I’m very environmental minded—I love the idea of an electric car,” Peterson told Newsweek. But she said she felt “jilted” by Musk’s hard right political turn.
“I just became ashamed and embarrassed to drive it around town,” Peterson said. “It was like a billboard for him—it made it look like I backed him and his company, which I no longer do.”
Courtesy of Cassandra Peterson
Analysts tracking corporate environmental performance say Tesla has been a leader in the clean-energy transition. The Model 3 and Model Y Teslas were the first EVs to crack the list of the world’s bestselling autos, a milestone in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning oil. The company also jump-started development of the EV charging infrastructure in the U.S. and the production of batteries that can store renewable energy in solar-powered homes and on the electric grid.
That track record should make Tesla a natural choice for nature-minded consumers and investors who want their money to match their values. But Musk presents eco-conscious car buyers with a conundrum: What to do when they feel a Clean Tech company’s CEO has done them dirty?
A Test for Clean Company Rankings
Late last month, the sustainable business groups As You Sow and Corporate Knights convened an online event to unveil their latest Carbon Clean200 report, a global list of the publicly traded companies “leading the sustainable clean-energy economy.”
Corporate Knights is a sustainable-economy media and research organization, and As You Sow is a shareholder advocate that promotes environmental and social corporate responsibility.
As the groups revealed Tesla in the third slot on the ranking, the chat board lit up. Critical comments about the company and its leader and questions about why Tesla was on the list seemed to catch the presenters a bit off guard.
“There are a lot of reasons not to invest in Tesla,” As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar said on the call. But Behar and Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps said there is no denying the contribution Tesla makes toward sustainability.
In a later interview with Newsweek, Heaps said the Carbon Clean200 ranking boils down to two key metrics: what a company produces and how the company operates.
“Tesla has lots of room for improvement on the how, but they’re really nailing it on the what,” Heaps said. Tesla rates poorly for measures such as diversity among its executives and its disclosure of basic information about environmental impacts, Heaps said, but it does a good job of advancing sustainability with its product and investments.
“You can’t find another company in the world that’s doing better in terms of putting its money forward to create a more sustainable world,” Heaps said. “What you do in a political environment is a little bit more complicated.”
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/Getty Images
As the world lags woefully behind on international targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there’s a lot riding on the success of EVs.
EVs have been a bright spot for U.S. efforts to decarbonize the economy, with sales and manufacturing investments on track to meet the national goals to cut emissions in the transportation sector. That’s according to a report last year by the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project of the research firm Rhodium Group and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
Even as the rate of EV sales growth slowed somewhat in 2024 compared to the previous year, U.S. car consumers still set a record with 1.3 million EV purchases, according to the auto information resource Kelley Blue Book. As Tesla’s sales have dropped, Kelley Blue Book reported, sales by other EV makers have grown.
Plunging Sales and Stock Prices
While Musk has risen to unparalleled influence with his role in the Trump presidency, 2025 has not been a good year for Tesla thus far.
“In 2025, Tesla [has] experienced significant sales declines across key global markets,” Alvin Liu, a senior analyst with the market analysis firm Canalys, told Newsweek via email.
January sales in Europe dropped by 45 percent year-on-year even as sales of EVs overall grew. Tesla saw a 51 percent sales decrease in China in February, Canalys found, while the company’s stock price has fallen by around 30 percent since its high in December, reflecting investor concerns.
“Elon Musk’s controversial role in the White House has further eroded investor confidence,” Liu wrote. He said the growing protests at Tesla showrooms are “likely to deter potential buyers and even push current owners to distance themselves from the brand and Musk’s polarizing image.”
Protest organizer Hunt said his group will be back at the Louisville Tesla location again this coming weekend, and a website for the Take Down Tesla protests lists more than 100 upcoming demonstrations in the U.S., U.K., Portugal, Malaysia and Iceland.
“As the public sours on what Elon Musk is doing, we can actually do things that are effective to hurt his wealth and to stop what he’s doing,” Hunt said.
Corporate Knights CEO Heaps said it’s up to each investor and car buyer to make their own decision when balancing the company’s actions against those of its top executive.
“For me, it’s not a tough decision,” Heaps said. He’s a Tesla driver, he said, and he’s keeping the car.
