“Musk himself is toxifying the Tesla brand,” Winter says. “We’re just helping him.”

begin partial quote from: begin quote: //www.wired.com/story/whats-driving-teslas-woes/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

“Musk himself is toxifying the Tesla brand,” Winter says. “We’re just helping him.”

TeslaTakedown started last month, kicked off by a February 10 posting on Bluesky by Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher and assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University. “Come out and participate in an international picket #TeslaTakeover locally,” she wrote, later agreeing with renaming the movement.

“I asked myself, what was I willing to physically do to raise awareness [about Musk]? Well, I’m willing to go out on Saturdays and protest in front of a Tesla dealership,” Donovan tells WIRED. “I made a flyer and started circulating it online. Alex saw my post, and we started texting about what to do; it all came together super fast.”

At the first demonstration in Boston on February 15, there were 50 people. By the third week, this had risen to 300. “I’ve met teachers, people who work in public health, people who are retired, students at universities—all Americans who want to see DOGE disappear,” says Donovan. “It’s not only a strategic boycott of Tesla, it’s a polyvocal protest where lots of grievances are aired.”

Elon Musk and Tesla didn't respond to requests for comment.

Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, has studied over 300 modern uprisings worldwide and found that change usually becomes inevitable when just 3.5 percent of a population join a movement.

“There are typically far more people who sympathize with movements than people who actively participate in them,” Chenoweth tells WIRED.