As Tesla inches closer to launching its late and overhyped robotaxi experiment, a critical vulnerability in their business model looks larger by the minute: removal of a private ownership barrier that currently protects their brand from widespread destruction.
A disturbing pattern of hostility is already established by Tesla covert and overt embrace of Nazi-adjacent hate platforms like MAGA, America First and AfD (Germany). We’ve also seen the unpreparedness of Tesla, given charging cables regularly stolen from Supercharger stations across the country. Tesla vehicles are increasingly keyed, windows smashed, and in some extreme cases, even deliberately destroyed by their own frustrated owners. In Finland, one dissatisfied Tesla owner went so far as to blow up his Model S with 30kg of dynamite rather than pay fraudulent and exorbitant repair costs.
Yet a crucial psychological barrier has protected most Teslas from even worse treatment: personal ownership. People recognize damaging a Tesla harms an individual owner – a neighbor, a colleague, a fellow citizen – who has invested their personal resources and depends on that vehicle. This is remarkably unlike Tesla management, which has seemed unfased when their cars spontaneously combust or lock occupants inside and burn them to death.
With robotaxis, a crucial psychological barrier vanishes entirely. Think about what that means for a company that failed for years to design a better charger and protect its cable from theft.
A Tesla robotaxi is no longer perceived as “someone’s car” but purely as “Tesla’s property” – a rolling symbol of the Nazi-promoting corporation without any protection from response by those targeted by its Nazism.
This fundamental shift transforms Tesla vehicles from someone’s personal property into corporate billboards of Hitler’s face ripe for attack.
The psychological dynamic changes completely: damaging a robotaxi isn’t misdirected or at risk of collateral damage, because it’s striking directly against the source of animosity. Without soldiers of Tesla deployed to monitor and protect their weakly designed vehicles, they become perfect targets anyone with grievances – whether against Tesla specifically, autonomous technology more broadly, or even just the economic disruption being experienced under a DOGE coup destroying everything good like a bad Ayn Rand novel.
Tesla’s attacks on human agency and private ownership fundamentally changes the equation against them. It’s akin to placing an unguarded, controversial symbol, a giant Swasticar, in public spaces and expecting it to remain unscathed. The restraint people show toward personally-owned property simply won’t extend to Swasticars seen as symbols of hate, disruption, job loss, or technological overreach.
The financial math becomes untenable. Each damaged robotaxi requires:
- Costly repairs or replacement
- Service interruption and lost revenue
- Towing and logistics expenses
- Potential safety investigations
- Increased security costs and insurance premiums
The current security model appears insufficient. Remote monitoring can’t stop physical attacks in progress. Cameras may identify perpetrators after the fact, but can’t prevent the initial damage. And in many urban areas, response times would be too slow in too many places to intervene effectively.
A year ago nine Tesla were burned in one night in Berlin, Germany.
And that was long before Elon Musk became so overtly known for funding and promoting the return of his grandfather’s Nazism.
Without a radical rethinking of vehicle security or unprecedented law enforcement resources dedicated to protecting Tesla assets, it’s difficult to envision how any single robotaxi could remain operational for more than a few weeks in urban environments where pro-democracy sentiment runs high.
Tesla’s ill-concieved “datalord” robotaxi plans to capture customers may ultimately falter not because of the many technological or even regulatory hurdles, but because their anti-human campaigns have generated a fundamental change in social psychology: when ownership disappears, so do the natural market protections it provides. It was only a year ago Waymo saw their driverless taxi sacrificed in what appeared like a Burning Man coming home party.
SF crowds celebrating Lunar New Year brought the spirit of “Burning Man” back to its streets (where the event started), by using fireworks to publicly destroy a Waymo.
Removing the human element from taxis means transforming already weak and unsafe assets into unprotected symbols of tyrannical political power parked directly in the face of public grievance and discontentment.