Four Tesla Cybertrucks burned overnight in a lot near 4th Avenue and Spokane Street in Seattle. The lot serves as a temporary storage space for Teslas arriving from overseas before they are sent to dealerships.

This incident comes after a series of attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities across the country since the Trump inauguration. Elon Musk, an early investor, board member, and current CEO of Tesla, has taken a role in the Trump administration.

These attacks have ranged from graffiti and vandalism at dealerships to arson and reports of gunfire at Tesla locations, including a recent incident in Portland.

While covering the story for Seattle’s Morning News, a man approached KIRO Newsradio’s Luke Duecy and pulled out what appeared to be a knife.

“He decided to come up to me right before I came on air and tried to get me to leave, essentially. And then I told him “No.” And that’s when I saw this person reach in the back behind like a belt or something and pull something metallic out underneath, and I went “oh,” and there were unfortunately a lot of bad language between the two of us.

“That was a scary moment as well. But you know, obviously someone does not want us to be here and to show these vehicles, but that’s in fact what we’re doing.”

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 hours ago

    I went “oh,” and there were unfortunately a lot of bad language between the two of us.

    SO unfortunate! Note that he didn’t call any other part of the incident unfortunate, only the “bad” language 🤦😄

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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    19 hours ago

    The lot serves as a temporary storage space for Teslas arriving from overseas before they are sent to dealerships.

    Hang on a second, this lot of cybertrucks came in from overseas? Aren’t they made in the USA?

    Hmmm maybe they were just stored there because they weren’t selling.

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        16 hours ago

        I’m generally not one to believe in conspiracies, but this would actually have an excellent motivation. Elon would get to claw back the money lost of producing an undesired rust bucket through insurance claims while simultaneously getting to act like the victim of big bad scary librul’ protests turned violent.

        • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          8 hours ago

          And then he pays higher insurance premiums and likely will still lose money because that’s how insurance companies operate

      • Arsecroft@lemmy.sdf.org
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        18 hours ago

        not to be conspiratorial, but i wonder how difficult it would be to trigger this remotely

        edit: i just read he was cutting off funding for bomb sniffing dogs, i wonder if its just that he wants to keep the money

  • Chozo@fedia.io
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    19 hours ago

    Definitely shouldn’t harass the reporters covering this. We want people to see this damage. We want people to know that there are others just as angry as they are, and that they’re not alone in their fury.

    • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      18 hours ago

      It sounds like the person with the knife may have been a Tesla dealer who didn’t want the news covered:

      While covering the story for Seattle’s Morning News, a man approached KIRO Newsradio’s Luke Duecy and pulled out what appeared to be a knife.

      “I can’t tell if that person is with another business that’s nearby or with this business. Someone clearly rolled in, older gentleman, did not want us being here, wanted us all to leave,” Duecy said.

      “He decided to come up to me right before I came on air and tried to get me to leave, essentially. And then I told him “No.” And that’s when I saw this person reach in the back behind like a belt or something and pull something metallic out underneath, and I went “oh,” and there were unfortunately a lot of bad language between the two of us.

      “That was a scary moment as well. But you know, obviously someone does not want us to be here and to show these vehicles, but that’s in fact what we’re doing.”

    • DasAlbatross@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Sure. But if reporters come across the angry people in action they should walk away, not expose anyone, and just cover the result.

  • PineRune@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    … Spokane Street in Seattle. The lot serves as a temporary storage space for Teslas arriving from overseas before they are sent to dealerships.

    I’m not surprised, but I kinda thought these were supposed to be “Made In America”. Is Tesla subject to these Tariffs like everything else?

    • subignition@fedia.io
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      14 hours ago

      “made in america” tends to mean “we imported a bunch of the components and did the final assembly in the US”

  • Today@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    I’m all for fighting back, but are we just giving him insurance money and taking out cars that he now doesn’t have to try to sell. I’d rather see them rusting at the car lot, selling for $15k because they’re stuck with so much inventory.

    • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 hours ago

      I don’t understand why people seem to think insurance is some kind of “get out of a bad situation free” product. Sure, Elmo might get the wholesale price back, but he’s still going to lose out on the earnings from the car, cuz they probably won’t give full sale price, and definitely won’t give him compensation for lost fees and financing or interest that comes along with a real purchase.

      And in top of that, the more of these attacks that happen, the more insurance companies are going to see Tesla as uninsurable due to the amount of risk insuring them will bring with the hate he’s generating, and will make dealerships and lots have to spend more on security and risk losing out on space due to these attacks on top of increasing premium costs.

      I’m not advocating that people burn down Tesla’s and Tesla dealerships, but one of the best ways to hurt a company long term is to fuck with their insurance. It’s seen as a mandatory product for most businesses, and you can break a budget if premiums suddenly increase.

    • Hello_there@fedia.io
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      17 hours ago

      This is unambiguously a good thing. All of this is negative press is affecting reputation. People torching cars and chargers keeps the bad press in the news. Protest is supposed to be disruptive.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      In the grand scheme of things the money from the sale of the cars is relatively insignificant to his wealth.
      The stock price dropping hurts him a lot more, and “people don’t want to buy the cars” is better for the price than “people actively hate the company”.

      He’s also going to have an increasingly difficult time getting the insurance to pay the sales price of the car when it won’t sell.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        He’s also going to have an increasingly difficult time getting the insurance to pay the sales price of the car when it won’t sell.

        He’s also going to have much more expensive insurance premiums when the insurer catches on that Cybertrucks are statistically so much more likely to be damaged by vandalism.