Alex Winter wants everyone to know that he’s not anti-Tesla. He’s certainly not against electric vehicles, either. He’s a longtime EV owner who says he’s only been to gas stations in recent years to buy Snickers bars. And he doesn’t think the people who have spent the last few weekends picketing Tesla stores are against those things, either.
“We are anti-Elon Musk,” the actor and filmmaker told InsideEVs this weekend, during the second of two consecutive rounds of protests held around the world. “The mission is to decouple Musk from Tesla, because he is a toxic figurehead for that company.”
Winter has emerged as one of the leading online voices amplifying the Tesla Takedown protests, which have seen thousands of angry people carrying anti-Musk signs outside the automaker’s stores from Portland to London. His Hollywood resume includes a title role in the Bill & Ted film franchise, The Lost Boys and other films.
But he has also directed and produced several documentary films about the rise of groundbreaking technologies like YouTube and cryptocurrency, which he said led to his distrust of Musk—especially at this current moment. Over the past month, Musk has personally led the Trump administration’s potentially illegal efforts to defund large swaths of the government and fire federal workers.
According to news reports, more than 200 people protested at a store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; dozens attended events in Boston and Philadelphia; and a Seattle Tesla store reportedly had to close down due to crowds there.
Photo by: InsideEVs
Winter said those taking to the streets are attempting to hit back where it hurts: Get people to stop buying Teslas at such a level that shareholders have no choice but to part ways with the CEO. “The vast majority of [Musk’s] wealth is tied up in his stake in Tesla,” Winter said. “It would be a big hit to him to be decoupled from it.”
“I’ve been around the tech industry a long time,” Winter added. “I haven’t liked him since he was at PayPal.” He said that while he’s owned Audi EVs and electric motorcycles over the years, he’s never had a Tesla, but “most of my friends drive them.” Many people are rethinking those purchases now because of Musk’s actions to gut the federal workforce, he said.
“I think it’s the hypocrisy of it,” Winter said. “This idea that these guys, who have built their wealth off of government subsidies and government handouts, are accusing hard-working, low-income people of being parasites. It makes people just staggeringly angry.”
Winter made clear that the protests were not his idea. He heard about a Boston event from a friend, Harvard social scientist and disinformation researcher Joan Donovan, and decided to signal-boost things from there. His tool has been the nascent social media network Bluesky, where he’s been posting about new events and relaying photos to his nearly 172,000 followers.
The platform has driven much of the momentum around these protests. As TechCrunch reported recently, this is arguably the first moment of major cultural impact for Bluesky, which has seen tremendous growth from users fleeing X—driven, in part, by social media users being fed up with Musk. (Tesla no longer responds to requests for comment from U.S. media outlets.)
That sentiment may have turbocharged the online organizing to demonstrate against the CEO. Clearly, Winter isn’t alone in how he feels. Just this past weekend, picketers carried signs that said “Dump $TSLA,” “Deport Musk” and “Go Cyberf—ck Yourself.
The events seem to be gaining steam. More Tesla store protests are planned for the coming weeks, organized on the group’s website and Bluesky. Organizations like the liberal group Indivisible, which has organized anti-Trump protests elsewhere, are now getting involved as well. The picketing movement has resonated with people in many countries (including those incensed about Musk’s increased role in global far-right politics) and many of them are Tesla owners themselves. “We get Tesla drivers honking their horns and fist-bumping us as they go by,” Winter said.
For all the challenges Tesla has faced over the years—becoming the only truly successful American auto startup in decades, ramping up the mainstream Model 3 and achieving consistent profitability—this current moment may be among its most difficult yet: Can it win back buyers when the “heart and lungs” of its stock price growth is actively turning people away?
The electric automaker’s sales declined for the first time in a decade last year, in part because of a fairly aged lineup of EVs (even the introduction of the Cybertruck failed to lead to a sales increase) and Musk’s continued alienation of the traditionally progressive or center-left Tesla buyer base. Tesla is seeking to reverse its fortunes this year with the revamped Model Y, as well as a potentially more affordable new EV and possible updates to the Model S and Model X. Yet 2025 is off to a really rough start for the brand.
The anger over Musk has impacted the company, and Tesla owners, in other ways. Police in Germany are investigating the projection of an image depicting Musk in an alleged Nazi-style salute onto the Berlin Gigafactory. In the U.S., Tesla cars have been tagged with graffiti, with the Cybertruck being a particularly frequent target.
Yet as much as critics say the ire is aimed at the cars themselves, Winter is adamant that for he and other Tesla Takedown protesters, the specific target is Tesla’s CEO.
“The primary mission was to devalue the sales of the company, to kind of help force a shareholder response to Musk,” Winter said. “Certainly, sales are down and the stock is down, and we’re not the only reason.. but for me, the mission stood or failed based on amplification. Meaning, how many people from the press responded to it, and how many people went out onto the street?”
Whether that’s a realistic goal remains to be seen. Tesla won’t report its first-quarter earnings and sales until late April, and Musk’s drive toward artificial intelligence and robotaxis is the reason the company is valued so highly.
Yet its revenue still primarily comes from more conventional means, like selling EVs and regulatory credits to other automakers. According to multiple reports, Tesla employees and investors are increasingly concerned about the polarizing billionaire’s impact on the company. Even board members have sold tens of millions in company stock in recent weeks alone.
Yet while Musk hasn’t publicly addressed how he’s balancing his duties at Tesla beyond saying he mainly “goes where the problem is” these days, his actions at the Department of Government Efficiency show no signs of slowing down. But the protesters don’t either, Winter said.
“As long as Musk is taking to our country with a blunt hammer, we’ll be out there and we’ll just keep building,” he said.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
