Elon Musk-led Tesla has been the target of multiple vandals in recent weeks, while a man was charged with a terrorism offense for threatening another of his companies.
Police in Loveland, Colorado said Wednesday that they arrested a 40-year-old suspect, Lucy Grace Nelson, after catching her with “incendiary devices” at a local Tesla dealership on Monday.
According to court records, Nelson is suspected in vandalism attacks on the dealership on Jan. 29, Feb. 2, and Feb. 7.
In one case, Molotov cocktails were allegedly thrown at vehicles and, in another, the words “Nazi cars” were spray painted on the building.
A message apparently directed at Musk, who has been Tesla’s CEO since 2008, was found at the scene of one of the incidents as the billionaire White House adviser presides over President Donald Trump’s purge of the federal workforce.
Tesla has been the target of similar graffiti elsewhere in the U.S. A Cybertruck owner in Redwood City, California, found that someone had spray painted “Nazi” on the side of their vehicle.
Earlier this week, the company said it was removing graffiti on one of its chargers in Utah that also featured the word “Nazi” along with a swastika symbol.
Across the Atlantic, German police said Wednesday that they are investigating the “political motivations” behind an arson attack at a Berlin construction site managed by a company with ties to Tesla.
The fire, which broke out Tuesday evening, damaged construction cranes, as well as cables belonging to Germany’s national railway company.
An anonymous letter posted on a far-left online platform—which police said they believe is authentic—claimed responsibility for the incident and stated that the target was the construction firm Strabag because it is involved in a planned expansion of a Tesla Gigafactory 20 miles east of the German capital.
“No company stands for the new technocratic fascism as much as Tesla,” the letter reads.
Last month, activists projected the word “heil” on the Gigafactory outside Berlin along with an image of Musk giving what many likened to a Nazi salute at a rally following Trump’s inauguration. (Musk has denied that characterization of his gesture.)
In addition to his support for Trump, Musk has been an ardent supporter of Germany’s far-right extremist Alternative für Deutschland, which achieved a major breakthrough in this week’s federal election.
In the Netherlands, the facade of a Tesla showroom in the Hague was defaced with the phrases “No to Nazis” and “F--- off fascist” earlier this month.
Tesla is not the only of Musk’s business ventures to be targeted.
A 25-year-old Tennessee man, Ethan Paul Early, was charged with an act of terrorism for allegedly threatening to burn down a Memphis data center of xAI, an artificial intelligence company founded by Musk in 2023.
According to court records, police spoke to Early after a friend of his phoned them with concerns that he allegedly wanted to burn down the data center because he was angry at Musk and Trump.
The friend said Early claimed he had begun stocking up on thermite, which can be used in incendiary devices and explosives.
The court records say he acknowledged to police that he went “too far down the deep end.”
