“Up with EVs, down with Elon.” That’s the message on bumper stickers a D.C. resident had printed to put on her Tesla and give to others.
As the political climate seems to grow more intense every day, some Tesla owners are using their cars to voice their opinions about Elon Musk.
Anti-Musk bumper stickers have appeared on cars in the D.C. area and beyond.
As Musk oversees sweeping changes to the federal government, Tesla owner Margaret Moerchen, an astronomer who lives in the Tenleytown area, said she felt called to put stickers on the electric vehicle she bought in 2015.
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“We wanted to make it clear that these are not our values. We don't align with this – that having a Tesla doesn't mean that we buy into what Elon Musk is selling,” she said.
The stickers appear on the back bumper, in the rear window and even on the hood of her silver sedan.
“It's a real cult of personality now, and it's not my personality. So, I feel like I have to make that clear,” Moerchen added.
What does it mean to drive a Tesla right now?
“I definitely wonder about every Tesla I see. If they don't have a sticker saying something against Elon Musk, then I wonder, how recently did you buy that? Did you think about that when you bought the car?” Moerchen asked.
She said she’s looking at ways to even cover up the Tesla symbol on her car.
“We are going to have a little ‘power to the people’ fist here. Another in the back. And then I've got a rainbow, like a vertical strip version of the pride flag, that's gonna go across the Tesla words,” she said.
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Many anti-Musk and pro-Musk stickers are available for sale online. One selling for $10 says, “I bought this after I knew Elon was awesome.”
Moerchen is all out of the dozens of anti-Musk stickers she had printed, after she posted about them on a neighborhood listserv. She said she’ll likely get about 100 more. She said she hopes the stickers will become irrelevant and she can peel them off.