​My latest letter to Tesla Motors:

Tesla Motors

1 Tesla Road

Austin, TX 78725

 

To whom it may concern: 

 

As a Tesla owner, I wrote, back when Elon Musk was placed in charge of the fictitious government "department" of "government efficiency," to express my concern about the politicization of Tesla, a private company that should not assume support of its customers for the CEO's radical right wing politics. (Interestingly, of course, "DOGE"  proved to foster just the opposite of efficiency, and is corrupt, illegal and not a "department" of government at all, but all this is tangential to my point here).

 

Now that the Board has approved a totally ridiculous and unsupportable compensation package for Musk and effectively dissociated itself from the concerns for environmental responsibility that most of its customers share, I find myself in an even more uncomfortable position. I now regret very much having bought a Tesla in the first place, not because it isn't a good car, because it is. But because I want nothing to do with this company under these circumstances. My intention, since the car is virtually unsaleable in this market as a used vehicle, is to hold on to it for now, but to spend as little as possible in any venue that is owned or operated by Tesla, and to continue to express my opposition to everything Musk stands for. One way to do that is to boycott Tesla, insofar as feasible, while continuing to drive one of your cars.

 

Please understand that by associating your company with radical right wing politics, you have effectively alienated a significant portion of your customer base, and many of us will never purchase a Tesla product again unless the company completely shifts its focus and direction away from this politicization. So good luck with the totally unrealistic and highly improbable growth that would be required for Tesla to succeed sufficiently to pay off Musk's outrageous and extortionate compensation proposal.

 

It's sad really; Tesla was at one time literally the cutting edge of the electric vehicle transformation. With the failed and ridiculous Cybertruck, you have given up any claim to that status, and it is increasingly clear that BYD and other world manufacturers are ahead of Tesla in technology and affordability. But even more important, other manufacturers have the good sense to stay out of politics. Unfortunately Musk still controls Tesla to the extent that you don't seem to have internalized that wisdom. I'd like to say I look forward to a major change in direction at Tesla, but I'm not optimistic that such change is on the horizon. Maybe Musk will grow bored and spin off or sell the EV manufacturing business, allowing the new owners to go another way, but that too doesn't appear likely.  

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Silence is complicity. Americans who believe in democracy MUST RESIST. 

"If the freedom of speech is taken away-- then dumb and silent, we may be led like sheep to the slaughter."

                       --George Washington, 1783