Protests target hundreds of Tesla showrooms worldwide
They’re the latest demonstrations to call for a boycott of Tesla, as a result of Elon Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) which has seen him slash federal budgets and fire thousands of government workers.
There were more than 200 events planned as part of a global day of action on Saturday, 29 March, which called for people to sell off Tesla stock, avoid buying Tesla EVs, and join further protests. Activists descended on Tesla showrooms in dozens of US states as well as New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland and other EU countries.
One New York protester, Sophie Sheperd, told The Guardian: “We’re here to protest Musk, who has essentially held a Tesla car show on the White House lawn. We want to disrupt his business as much as possible, so that includes all Teslas, and not just the Cybertruck.”
In Bristol, UK, another protestor told the BBC: “If we can just put one or two people off buying a Tesla today to help spread the message and get his stock to go down further and further, hopefully that will give Elon and other billionaires like him the pause to think twice about what they’re doing.”
Tesla Takedown protests have been taking place since Musk entered the US government as the unelected head of ‘DOGE’. Some actions have escalated much further than placard-waving and slogan-chanting, with certain Tesla dealerships targeted with vandalism and even arson. In northwestern Germany on Saturday, a fire destroyed seven Tesla vehicles. According to CBS, Musk reportedly told a company meeting in March that vandals should “stop acting psycho”, while some of the actions have been declared acts of domestic terrorism by the US government.
The official Tesla Takedown group has condemned acts of vandalism saying: “We are a non-violent grassroots protest movement. We oppose violence and destruction of property. Peaceful protest on public property is not domestic terrorism.”
The protests represent a grassroots movement that is part of a wider series of actions against the EV maker. Last week, Canada announced it was blocking Tesla from all EV rebate programmes amid rising US tariffs on import vehicles, while a mass stock sell-off has seen the company’s share prices more than half since December 2024.
