Tesla Exodus Continues As Senator Mark Kelly Dumps Car Over “A–hole” Elon Musk

What a difference a couple years of bad tweets and alleged Nazi salutes makes. Just a few years ago, driving a Tesla was considered a blow against the conservative establishment, an easy way to signal one’s lefty creds and concern about the earth. Today, with its most famous investor apparently acting as the unelected ruler of the US, the bloom is definitely off the Tesla rose, and high-profile drivers of the vehicle are ditching their Teslas in favor of other brands. The latest Tesla trade-in comes from Arizona Democratic senator Mark Kelly, who announced Friday that he was dumping his Tesla after “Elon Musk kind of turned out to be an asshole.”

Unlike other famous folks who have kissed their Teslas farewell, Kelly’s decision appears to have been directly provoked by the car company’s CEO, himself. While people like singer Sheryl Crow have been motivated to sell off their Teslas due to the news of the day (pick a day, any day…), Kelly’s announcement follows an ugly online interaction with Musk via X (formerly Twitter), the social network the Tesla investor purchased, then renamed, in 2022.

Kelly, a former US Navy fighter pilot, tweeted details from a recent visit to Ukraine earlier this week, saying, “We can’t give up on the Ukrainian people.” Musk reposted the tweet with the response, “You are a traitor,” prompting Kelly to reply, “Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”

When asked about the exchange, Kelly said of Musk, “Obviously, he’s not a serious guy,” later telling Rachel Maddow, “The only oath I can think of that maybe Elon has sworn is an oath to his own checking account, to his pocketbook, an oath may be to ruining the lives of veterans.”

“I had veterans in my office last week who, after really good performance reports, found out that Elon Musk fired them for poor performance. He was ruining these people’s lives … they did not deserve to get fired by an email from an unelected billionaire.”

A few days later, Kelly put his money where his accelerator pedal is—or where it was. In a double diss to Musk-funded companies, Kelly stood in front of his black Tesla Friday to announce via X that he’d just taken his last drive in the vehicle, as “Every time I get in this car in the last 60 days or so, it reminds me of just how much damage Elon Musk and Donald Trump is doing to our country.”

“Elon Musk kind of turned out to be an asshole, and I don’t want to drive a car built and designed by an asshole,” Kelly said, which isn’t quite fair: While Musk was an early investor in the company, he wasn’t part of its day-to-day operations until 2008, when he came on as the company’s fourth CEO. How much of a hand he has in the design or building of the car is certainly debatable!

But Kelly’s follow-up comment that the vehicle feels like “a rolling billboard” for Musk appears to be a sentiment shared by many, including those mounting protests nationwide at Tesla dealerships. As another Tesla owner allegedly said, “I’m getting uncomfortable driving this car around because it’s like driving a big red MAGA hat.”

That Tesla owner might have been more prescient than we all knew, given the bizarre, Donald Trump-fronted pro-Tesla rally at the White House on Tuesday. Even the president’s endorsement wasn’t enough to save Tesla’s stock, which continues to struggle, facing its worst week on the market since 2020.

The downturn in public interest in Tesla suggests that Kelly’s not alone when he says that he now has “a really hard time driving around in this thing” and that “It’s time for an upgrade.”

“There’s some things I really liked about it. There are things I didn’t like about it, but that doesn’t matter,” he says. “What matters is … doing the right thing. I think it’s time to get rid of it.”