Swap the logo? Sell the car? Seattle, a Tesla town, grapples with Elon Musk in Trump's orbit

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f you wanted to flip-off every Tesla driver you saw on an average Seattle day, you’d get tired fast, Betsy Hoffmeister thinks.

“They're so common that you'd be flipping the bird every 30 seconds. Your finger would get a cramp,” Hoffmeister said on a recent drive through West Seattle. “There's one right there. That one’s clean.”

Hoffmeister owns a Tesla herself, but hers is dirty and has a bumper sticker saying, "I bought this before he was a fascist weirdo."

Like many Seattleites, she’s deeply conflicted about owning the car: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s full-throated support of Donald Trump, recent moves to downsize the federal government, and apparent Nazi gestures and jokes haven’t gone over well in this part of Washington state.

From replacing the brand's logos with others to getting rid of the vehicles altogether, we heard from dozens of local drivers about how they're navigating the politics of Tesla ownership in 2025.

RELATED: Protesters rally against Musk outside local Tesla dealership

In Seattle, less than 9% of voters went for Trump last year, and the state budged toward him less than any other in the nation. Musk's leadership of the administration's newly-created Department of Government Efficiency have sparked protests at local Tesla dealerships and vandalism of Cybertrucks documented in local social media videos.

But the city also has more Teslas per capita than any other American city except for San Francisco and Honolulu. Washington state was an early adopter of Tesla — in 2013, the cars were popping up here faster than anywhere else. The company still benefits from a loophole allowing it to do what no other automaker is allowed to do in this state: Sell direct-to-consumers at Tesla stores.

RELATED: Tesla's direct car sales loophole survives in Washington state — for now

But that might be slowly beginning to change.

Last year, new Tesla registrations dropped in Washington state for the first time in a decade. There's more competition from other electric carmakers now, but “there's no question with a consumer-facing company that if the company's favorability ratings are low, you could link that to sales,” said Stephen Gengaro, an equity research analyst.

Gengaro works for the investment firm Stifel, which surveyed consumers about their sentiments toward Tesla last month and found all-time favorability lows. Tesla did not respond to KUOW's multiple requests for comment.

Last month, KUOW put out a call-out to listeners asking for their feelings about owning Teslas in this political moment. The emails and comments online ranged from listeners who don’t see the problem with owning a Tesla, to those who admitted to actively vandalizing them.

Amie, a hospice social worker, saved up for three years to buy her 2018 Model 3.

"Used-to-be conservatives thought I was an ass for owning a Tesla and now liberals think I’m an ass for owning a Tesla," she wrote in. "How does this happen? It’s just a good car and made solid financial sense. Why does this car make a political statement? I think what Elon Musk is doing is horrifying… I wish he didn’t have any association with my car, but I am not in a position to dump a perfectly good reliable car that I need for work because the CEO has gone off the rails."

Billy from Redmond wrote, “Fuck Trump and fuck Musk.”

“Whenever I drive in Seattle, I make sure to park in parking garages instead of street lots," he wrote in an email to KUOW. "I'm worried about being seen as a Musk supporter and being vandalized. I'm very pissed that this vehicle I bought out of being an Earth-concerned citizen helped Musk get to where he is now. I feel shame when looking at my most expensive possession.”

Someone emailed from an untraceable proton mail account saying they live in Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood and had vandalized four Teslas in the neighborhood just that week.

“I keyed two of them (with a knife) and used spray paint on two more. I wear a mask so I do not show up on the Tesla security cameras. I am doing it so that people see the vandalism and are less likely to buy a Tesla, which will hurt our unelected dictator, Elon Musk,” they wrote.

The person did not respond to multiple follow-up emails, and records searches for their email account came up empty.

The Seattle Police Department reports seeing small spikes in Tesla vandalism. For instance, four Teslas were reported vandalized the week after Elon Musk endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign last summer. Then two days before the election, three Teslas were reported vandalized. The past month has seen six reports of Teslas being vandalized.

However, since January 2024, the weekly count of Tesla vandalisms has mostly remained the same at roughly one to two per week.

Toss the Tesla, keep it, or swap the logo?

Ashley from Bothell bought a Tesla less than two years ago, but decided recently that she could no longer pay subscription or service fees to the company. People were calling them “SwastiCars” online.

“I do not want to be driving a SwastiCar, thank you. That is completely against my values,” she said in an interview. KUOW agreed not to publish Ashley's last name due to her concerns about being targeted politically.

She’s not wealthy like the stereotype of a Tesla owner — she noted that her family lives in a one-bathroom house in the suburbs. But they sold their Tesla for almost $12,000 less than they paid for it.

“We now have a used [Mustang Mach E] with a car payment that’s slightly more per month, but I’m still happy in my gut with my financially-bad decision,” Ashley said.

For his part, Jordan Schwartz doesn’t feel selling his Tesla would hurt Elon Musk, but he wanted to do something. Last month, he got a heat gun, a fishing line, and an eraser wheel attachment for his screw gun. He heated up the Tesla logos on his Model Y, cut them off with the wire, and buffed away the marks.

According to social media posts, other Seattle drivers are replacing Tesla logos with ones from Honda, Toyota, and Mazda. But Schwartz wanted to keep his clean so the nakedness and absence makes a statement. He even cut off the “DUAL MOTOR” words above the bumper.

“Once every symbol that they put on there is gone, the whole thing becomes more clearly, I think, a statement,” Schwartz said after cutting the final letters off.

A climate tech investor in Seattle, Schwartz bought his Model Y in 2021 because he thought it was the best — and would argue, still the best — electric vehicle on the market.

“Climate change is the existential threat to our civilization, and so I felt like continuing to drive these internal combustion engine cars was immoral,” Schwartz said.

At the time of his purchase, “I thought, ‘[Elon Musk is] an asshole.’ But I also respected what he had done,” Schwartz added. “He's very intelligent. He's a genius in a lot of ways.”

However, Musk is now part of an administration removing any mentions of climate change from federal websites. Schwartz is frustrated by Musk’s support for Germany’s far-right party and a salute he made on Inauguration Day that looked clearly to Schwartz like a Sieg Heil, and confused.

“[Musk] at least understands that climate change is a real thing and it poses a genuine threat to the world,” Schwartz said. “Even if he is a Nazi sympathizer, I would think he’d at least be a climate-friendly Nazi sympathizer — but not even that!”

Musk has insisted he’s not a Nazi and that his gesture on Inauguration Day was not a Nazi salute.

Betsy Hoffmeister isn’t buying it. She’s Jewish and grew up in a Baltimore Jewish community where people didn’t drive BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes, or any car that had ever been associated with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

But Hoffmeister has a very particular problem: She’s 4’11,” and for most of her life, every car has been too big.

“I haven't been able to see over the steering wheel. Like literally, cannot see over the steering wheel. So every car I've ever driven, I've had to use a booster seat as a grown-ass, adult human person — a booster seat,” Hoffmeister said.

She’s a lactation consultant and drives all over King County every day for work, meeting breastfeeding clients in their homes.

“I'd have to come home and lie on the floor for half an hour to recover from driving,” Hoffmeister said.

Then she got in the Tesla she currently drives, the seats and steering column adjusted.

“There's a hood,” she said, pointing to the hood while behind the wheel. “The car has a hood! Can you see the hood? You take for granted that cars have hoods.”

No more booster seats, no more back pain. But the discomfort returns when she reads or even thinks about Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

“With DOGE — I feel complicit,” she said somberly. “I'm driving a … DOGE-mobile.”

That feeling infects every drive, she said. She wonders if the car is listening to her — she jokes Musk will find out she’s a member of the resistance and tell the Tesla to drive her to Idaho. As she expressed her belief that Musk and Trump’s moves to dismantle parts of the federal government without Congressional approval could be “the end” of democracy in America, she began to panic and had to pull over.

She’s asking Jordan Schwartz, who’s a friend, to remove the Tesla logos on her car.

“It’s super symbolic,” she said, sitting in her car in the parking lot. “But I’m all about the symbolism.”