The protesters from over the weekend were gone, but three NYPD radio cars were parked down the street from the Tesla showroom in New York City’s West Village. One of the double tempered glass doors at the entrance was shattered.
“Please use other door,” a white sheet of paper read.
A bigger change became apparent only after you entered the still intact door.
Just last month, the place had seemed to imagine itself to be more than just another car dealership.
“Do you have an appointment?” the lone salesman on duty had asked when I entered back on Feb. 3.
“Do I need one?” I asked.
“We just need to check you in,” the salesman said.
He held out an iPad.
“All we need is first name, last name, email,” he explained.
He said that he was unable to provide any pricing information.
“We’re not sales,” he explained. “We’re a gallery.”
On Monday, four salespeople—rather than just one—were on duty and nobody inquired if you had an appointment or asked for your name and email. The young man who offered to assist me just seemed glad I was there as he showed me a Cybertruck .
“We do test-drives,” he said. “So if you want to drive it, you’re more than welcome to do so.”
The Cybertruck was either the same or identical to the one that had been there last month. So were what appeared to be a Legacy Model S and a Model Y. The difference here—and in every other Tesla dealership around the globe—was the public perception of the man who is synonymous with the company.
Elon Musk is widely believed to be the founder of Tesla, which was in fact founded by two engineers, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, in 2003. Eberhard is said to have asked his then-girlfriend, now wife, what she thought of the name Tesla for his new company as they sat in the Blue Bayou restaurant in Disneyland. She approved and Tesla it became.
More importantly, Everhard decided that Tesla’s electric motor was so zippy that the company should start off with a luxury sports car and then produce more moderately priced models once they were selling enough cars to reduce the cost. That was contrary to the usual auto industry strategy. Toyota, for instance, established itself down-market before creating the luxury Lexus line.
Musk had been a co-founder of Paypal and he signed on with Tesla as an investor, not an engineer. He liked the whole concept as much as if it had been his own. He joined the electric vehicle company’s board and eventually elbowed his way to become chairman.
According to a knowledgeable source, Musk would express his displeasure if anything was written about Tesla that did not prominently mention his name. Everhard was pushed out and Musk became the only name associated with Tesla as it became a bigger-than-big success.
The remarkably strong association between Musk and the company was no doubt a major factor in driving the stock up from $251.44 on the day President Donald Trump thanked him for his considerable electoral help to an all-time high of $479.86 on Dec. 17.
But in the ensuing months, the chaotic callousness of the cuts enacted by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) became ever more apparent. Musk—described as President Trump’s’ “first buddy”— spoke of a “parasite class” that included even those who were in acute distress and in dire need of federal assistance.
Meanwhile, Musk himself proved to be among the biggest of parasites. The Washington Post reported last month that “Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits.”
Tesla had previously defied market trends, but the stock now began to slide. It fell to $252.49 by Monday’s start. It slumped another 15.43 percent to $222.15 by the market’s 4 p.m. close. That was below where it stood on election day.
The Trump bump had become the Trump slump. Tesla experienced its first-ever decline in global sales, down last month 45 percent in Europe. In China, sales were down 49.3 percent.
In the U.S., sales appear to be down only 5 percent—but there are portents of a bigger drop soon to come.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that in one survey, 63 percent of car shoppers said they would not even consider buying a Tesla, up 10 percentage points from last spring. The Journal quoted one current owner saying, “It’s like driving a big red MAGA hat.”
That feeling is shared by ever more progressives who once embraced Tesla as a sign of being environmentally responsible. A video on TikTok showed the singer Sheryl Crow waving goodbye to the Tesla she had just sold. She gave the proceeds to NPR.
In an interview on Fox Business Network Monday, Musk conceded that his other ventures were suffering while he took his proverbial chainsaw to the federal government.
“How are you running your other businesses?” host Larry Kudlow asked.
“With great difficulty,” Musk replied, adding to the performance with a long pause and a deep sigh.
Meanwhile, folks who wear MAGA hats do not seem to be generally inclined to buy electric vehicles.
If you do go into the Tesla dealership in the West Village, you can count on some friendly folks showing you various models, from rounded beauties originally conceived by Everhard to the boxy, sharp edged contraption that is all Musk.
You can join him in being a parasite by taking advantage of a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 currently offered for new electric vehicles. And you do not have to worry that the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) will investigate your Tesla’s self-driving feature.
Most of the folks who do that have been laid off by DOGE.
