Am I Ethically Required to Sell My Tesla?

My neighbor certainly thinks so. I mostly regard this as silly.

In keeping with with the nationwide protests of Tesla, my neighbor placed this flyer in every Tesla windshield in the neighborhood, including mine:

On the other side of the flyer was a note (you don’t have to read it; I’ll pull out the main points soon).

The bottom line is that my neighbor thinks I should sell my Tesla for ethical and economic reasons. As an ethicist, I’ll take the arguments seriously, but I’ll conclude that the claim is silly.

To be clear, I don't mind that my neighbor left this note (although it’s annoying to receive it on three separate occasions). An attempt to respectfully communicate an ethical concern is fine by me. A friend of mine, also a Tesla owner and receiver of this note, is pissed off about it. I don’t see the sense in that. So please don’t read this as “guy who is angry/feels insulted fights back.” I love a good fight, but this isn’t one of them.

It’s also worth noting that I’m of the view that Trump and Musk are ethically bankrupt and their political views and aspirations are disgusting. My neighbor and I are in agreement on that point. If you think otherwise, you’ll probably disagree with my neighbor because you think he/she fails to understand how amazing Trump and Musk are. I’m not interested in engaging in that debate; if you aren’t already repulsed by Trump and Musk, nothing I can say will change your mind.

Three Reasons My Neighbor Thinks I Should Sell My Tesla

If you want to read that letter, go for it, but here’s the three reasons you’ll find in it:

Reason #1

“The Tesla brand represents a significant portion of Elon Musk’s wealth and power. Each Tesla on the road contributes to the brand’s value and that value directly fuels our nation’s descent into fascism…Whether you intend it or not, this vehicle represents a continuing investment in that dangerous political direction.”

Reason #2

I won’t quote the second paragraph, but it’s essentially: the financial value of your Tesla will decrease so sell now because otherwise you’ll lose money down the road.

Reason #3

The second to last paragraph essentially says: “you’ll rest easier at night because you’re probably anxious people will vandalize your car, even though I think that would be wrong.”

Some Quick Replies and Where to Focus

I’m not going to spend time dealing with Reasons #2 and #3. As for the former, my wife and I lease the car so we can’t sell it even if we wanted to. We could break the lease, which some quick research revealed would cost ~$7,500 (we’re only about 6 months in to a 3-year lease). As for Reason #3, well, I’m not an anxious guy. Parking a car on the street in Brooklyn is always a gamble. I’ve had several cars seriously damaged when parked (by other cars, by snowplows, by someone keying it, etc.). Do the odds of these bad things increase because it’s a Tesla? Maybe. I don't know. Not enough to worry me, anyway.

So let’s focus on Reason #1, which is the only ethically interesting argument anyway.

Am I Supporting the Morally Abhorrent?

My neighbor’s ethical argument is that I shouldn’t support people who push for fascism/authoritarianism/ethically horrendous policies and actions and that by having a Tesla I’m doing exactly that. I agree with the first part and disagree with the second; I don’t think I’m supporting fascism, etc. in any meaningful way by having a leased Tesla.

To help us think clearer about the extent of my support, let’s consider two extreme kinds of support.

On one extreme, there’s significant support that I don’t and wouldn’t engage in: personally providing Musk with a list of people in the federal government to fire because they’re too woke.

On the other extreme, there’s an insignificant amount of support that I do and basically can’t help but provide: I purchase goods and services on a daily basis which supports the general economy, which allows him to sell cars at all. Every single one of us supports Musk in this way, but it’s about as anemic a support as one can imagine.

My having a Tesla sits somewhere between these two extremes but certainly closer to the second one. That’s because:

• My monthly payments are an extremely small fraction of Tesla’s revenue. I pay around $500/month and in 2024 Tesla’s revenue was $97.65B, which means that my contribution is 500 / 97000000000 = 0.0000000051546392 or, rounding off, .0000005%. Telling me I’m financially supporting Musk and his authoritarianism by paying my lease is a bit like telling me I’m helping to turn the ocean into tea because I threw a tea bag in there.

• Musk has, even after losing $150B, a net worth of around $300B aka $300,000,000,000. Do I really need to spell out the math again to demonstrate that my financial contributions are akin to throwing a grain of sand onto a beach?

• There are at least 5,000,000 Teslas on the road right now and god knows how many advertisements/social/news media mentions. My one Tesla compared to all that contributes a negligent amount to Tesla’s brand presence. It’s like throwing out a Mickey sweatshirt and claiming I’ve lowered the brand presence of Disney.

Bottom line: my individual Tesla payments and car are too insignificant to play any kind of role in determining Musk’s financial powers or Tesla’s brand presence.

Now maybe you’re thinking:

But Reid! You’re missing the point! Yes, you’re one person, but if Tesla owners united and all of them returned/sold their Teslas, it would constitute a huge financial/brand hit to Musk!

This line of thought depends on the following empirical claim:

• There are enough Tesla owners who hate Trump/Musk such that if they all returned/sold their vehicles, it would cause a noteworthy decrease in Musk’s financial and/or political power and a decrease in Tesla’s brand presence.

I don’t know whether this empirical claim is true. Probably plenty of Tesla owners love Musk (looking at you, Cybertruckers!). But let’s grant the claim at least for the sake of argument. Because even if it’s true that if all those Tesla-owning Musk-haters were to have that impact I have no reason to believe there is any such coordinated, united attempt. This means that I can don face paint and scream, “Freeeeeedoooooooommmmmm!!” and get in line to return my Tesla only to turn around and see no one behind me. Such a gesture might feel good. It may be a wonderful symbolic gesture. But I generally don’t think we’re ethically required to perform symbolic gestures.

“But Reid,” you’ll say. “Change has to start somewhere. You turning in your car and telling people can be part of what inspires others to do the same. You can be part of creating a snowball effect!”

Yes, perhaps. I’m dubious of the empirical claim that I’ll inspire anyone and that this will have a snowball effect, but once again, I’ll grant it for the sake of argument. But this shouldn’t lead us to conclude that I have an ethical obligation to return the car and thus pay Tesla ~$7,500 for breaking my lease. At most the conclusion would be “it would be an ethically good thing to do, but it’s not ethically required. It would be above and beyond the call of duty.”

Should I do an ethically good thing above and beyond the call of duty? All else equal, yes. But all else is not equal. In this case it requires a ~$7,500 financial sacrifice (which also gives Tesla more money and allows them to re-sell a car they didn’t have before) for the mere possibility of having some inspiring effect which, even if it did happen, is only connected to the possibility that the financial damage would change Musk’s behavior. I just don’t see how the financial sacrifice is morally worth it.

The Psychology and the Politics - not the Ethical Reasoning - Behind that Letter

Look, I get it, Musk sucks. And having a Tesla, as a result, is not a good look. It’s even a little gross, I agree. But it’s a bad look because the brand is stained with the immoral character of Musk, not because having or keeping one is actually unethical. It’s ethically off-brand, not ethically off the rails.

I don’t know the person who left this note. If I had to guess, they are, like me, saddened and angered by the state of US politics and of Musk’s role in particular and they’re frustrated by their own (not to mention the Democrat’s) political impotence. And so they probably think, ‘I’m going to do what I can to support the cause.’ So they decide to walk around one of the most liberal neighborhoods in the country (Park Slope, Brooklyn) and place fliers on the cars of Tesla-owners telling them they should stop supporting Musk and then they really feel like they’re doing something. But the harsh reality is: they’re not. The frustration is reasonable. It’s shared. But our political activities have to extend well beyond empty gestures that urge others to perform empty gestures.