The latest incident of vandals tagging Teslas in the Boston-area has been reported in Dedham.
The Dedham Police Department is investigating at least two instances of vandalism in the area of the local Tesla dealership, in the 800-block of Providence Highway.
The first came late last month when the building was tagged with some messages, though what those messages said was not disclosed by the police. Then came a call on Tuesday morning reporting that two Tesla Cybertrucks had been tagged with a similar message, and had all their tires popped.
A representative at the Dedham Tesla dealership declined to comment.
The Dedham Police Department has discussed additional security measures with the dealership, according to a police statement. The department asks that anyone with any information regarding the crimes to contact police by calling 781-326-1212.
The announcement of the crimes follows shortly after a man was arrested for putting negative stickers of company CEO Elon Musk on Tesla vehicles in the Brookline area.
Harrison Grant Randall, 39, of Roslindale, allegedly told a victim of his alleged vandalism spree that his actions were his “free speech.” He was arrested and charged with six counts of defacing property in Brookline.
Randall’s arrest in turn came shortly after a Tesla charging station was set on fire in Littleton.
All the actions are set to a backdrop of nationwide activism against Tesla in protest against its leader, Elon Musk, who has stepped beyond his role as a tech billionaire to spearhead the new federal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, under the President Trump administration. He’s tasked with dramatically shrinking the size and expenditures of government, and his slash-and-burn tactics are angering many.
“Tesla is becoming a political symbol of Trump and DOGE, and that is a bad thing for the brand,” Wedbush Securities financial analyst Dan Ives told the Associated Press in an interview.
An example outside of Boston is three Tesla charging stations set on fire in a South Carolina outlet mall parking lot in North Charleston. Alongside the burned-out ports was the spray-painted message “long live the Ukraine” and some sort of “crude reference” to Trump, according to an Associated Press report.
The New York Times reports that shots were fired at a Tesla dealership early Thursday morning and a nonviolent protest occurred at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.
Musk is also the head of X, the social media micro-blogging platform known as Twitter when he bought it in 2022. The platform’s website suffered widescale outages Monday that made it unavailable for a large number of users. Musk himself called it a “massive cyberattack,” according to the AP.
Tesla stock has plummeted 45% so far this year, with a 15% freefall on Monday alone. Trump said Tuesday that he had purchased a Tesla himself.
“I don’t like what’s happening to you,” Trump told Musk, according to the Associated Press, before slipping into a red Tesla Model S, which retails for $80,000. “Wow. That’s beautiful.”
Herald wire services were used in this report.