"This car is great, but I'm going to sell it." The owner of a white Tesla Model 3 and "electric car enthusiast out of conviction" who Le Monde met on a Friday evening at a charging station south of Paris, vented his cold rage against Elon Musk. "Between his support for Trump and his kind of Nazi salute, it's been crescendo lately. So there's no way I'm going to keep giving money, even indirectly, to this person I don't want to hear about anymore," he said before getting back behind the wheel, eyebrows furrowed, as he waited for his car to have enough battery so he could continue his trip to a ski resort.

Talking to French Tesla owners often means witnessing an internal conflict. The American brand that transformed the unattractive electric vehicle (EV) into an efficient, chic, modern and desirable automobile no longer inspires pride but a bitter feeling of guilt and resentment toward a visionary businessman who has gone over to the dark side to become a far-right activist. It's as if they had to drive with Musk in the back seat as he spread conspiracy fake news on X. "I bought a cool story – that of a car brand for nice and admittedly 'posh' people, but today I'm being told a completely different one. It's about a dangerous extremist who has lost his marbles and whose ravings I'm supposed to finance," said Raphaël Charton, who runs a production company and has been loyal to the brand for seven years.

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