They Loved Their Teslas. Now They’re Too Embarrassed to Drive Them.

Fury at Elon Musk emerges as vandalism, protest and buyer’s remorse.

On the Lower East Side of Manhattan this month, two men spray-painted a red swastika on a parked Tesla Cybertruck. In the borough’s meatpacking district, six people sat on the floor of a Tesla showroom and refused to leave, chanting “Elon Musk is unelected, democracy must be protected” before being arrested. In Albany, lawmakers called for New York State’s pension fund to unload its 3.5 million shares of Tesla stock.

And in Harlem, Fred Brathwaite, a visual artist and hip-hop pioneer who goes by Fab 5 Freddy, decided it was time to part ways with his Tesla Model 3, which he bought in 2019. His reasons were unrelated to the car’s performance. “It’s really looking like you’re wearing a red MAGA hat driving this car,” he said.

New Yorkers once embraced Teslas as that rare signifier of liberal green virtue that actually had some giddyap under the hood — an anti-S.U.V. that didn’t drive like a cup of herbal tea. But now, as the cars are being overshadowed by their company’s leader, that embrace is shading toward regret, like a what-was-I-thinking haircut in an old class photo.

For Mr. Brathwaite, who loved his Tesla for the technology, not least the kicking stereo system, the turning point came when he watched the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, thrust his arm out in a way that struck many as mirroring a Nazi salute.

“That was insanity to me,” Mr. Brathwaite said. “And then I see people calling it the ‘Swasticar.’” Driving his once-beloved Tesla these days, he said, “I feel like I’m lugging around all that negative baggage.”

So he’s going to unload it.