The government should dismantle Tesla in Canada

First, let’s get one thing straight: anyone who owns a Cybertruck knew precisely what they were buying and who they were buying it from: it’s a MAGA hat on wheels. 

The Cybertruck has only been available for purchase since well after Elon Musk made his extreme far-right views known through his public statements and his actions, including turning Twitter into a reactionary soup of disinformation and hate. That saga hit its crescendo a full year before the first Cybertrucks lumbered off the line like a battalion of armoured dumpsters with built-in iPhones. Cybertruck owners can spare me their complaints that they don’t understand where the hate comes from. They bought it.

I have more time for the objections of people who bought Teslas in years prior. The cars were the first good-looking, functional and luxurious electric cars, so the well-heeled and eco-minded early adopters are victims in all of this — to a point. Because the problems Tesla has inflicted on all of us go beyond Musk’s current-day destructive meltdown. 

For nearly a decade now, as Musk has scrambled to deliver on his repeated promise of fully autonomous vehicles — a promise his outlandish stock valuation depends on — the rest of us have been made the unwitting guinea pigs in his beta testing. Some have paid dearly, mangled by cars operating what amounts to fancy cruise control. We didn’t sign up for this; Tesla owners chose to subject us to it.

Most bought those vehicles before Musk announced his support for Trump last summer and spent hundreds of millions to secure his presidency, before Musk began to dismantle the functioning of the U.S. government, before he said Canada is “not a real country” as we face the greatest threat to our sovereignty in our history. Most, but not all.

Regardless of when people bought their Teslas, they are all now caught up in the cumulative rage that Musk has built up against himself, which is boiling over in the form of protests and vandalism. That’s unfortunate for the owners stuck with dirty looks and rude gestures, since many bought them as a way to lower their carbon footprints and demonstrate that luxury and environmentalism aren’t necessarily incompatible. 

But the protests are serving an important purpose. The used market has been flooded with Teslas, thanks in no small part to the inverse status symbol they’ve become. That in turn influences the market for new ones, which is what Musk’s fortune relies on. Diminishing his wealth and status diminishes his ability to inflict harm on the rest of the world. 

The protests have also spurred our government into action. It’s rare for the feds to take aim at a specific company outside of the justice system, but just this week Chrystia Freeland announced Tesla would not be eligible for future rebate programs (which until now have made them much more affordable), and froze millions in suspicious rebates the company claimed as the current EV subsidy program was winding down.

Freeland should go farther. In her run for leadership of the Liberal Party, she promised a 100 per cent tariff on Teslas, and she should deliver on that promise as minister of transportation, or even ban new sales outright. It would be a clear way to strike at the rotten core of the Trump administration and send a message to its biggest financial backer: we see you. It would prevent Musk’s long-awaited “robotaxis” from scaling up the carnage of Full Self Drive in Canada. It would prevent more Cybertrucks from getting stuck on our snowy streets and scattering their glued-on panels on our highways.

She should also broaden the action British Columbia has taken in banning Tesla chargers from its charger rebate program. When the Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program opens its next round of funding for public and business-based chargers, Tesla should not be eligible for those either. Why should we put a penny in Musk’s pocket as he denies our government’s legitimacy?

It’s not as though there aren’t competitors, many of whom offer better products at better prices. Some, like Polestar, are even appealing to Tesla owners directly.

As for the few remaining prospective Tesla buyers in Canada, they can still go buy them south of the border. They probably feel more at home there, anyway.