Tesla drivers believe they are experiencing more road rage
Some Tesla drivers believe that they are experiencing more road rage than usual. The media tries to link it to Elon Musk’s Twitter antics, but it seems to be just good old EV haters.
Tesla owners are certainly not immune to road rage, which is a strange phenomenon that can affect anyone.
But Tesla owners do appear to have to face an added layer of hate on the road from people who just have a strange disdain for electric vehicles.
We previously reported on several instances of Tesla haters rolling coal on Tesla drivers. In one instance, I ended up actually talking with the Tesla hater, and it became clear that his hate came from misinformation about electric vehicles and Tesla. At the end of our conversation, he was actually apologetic about the incident and showed a willingness to educate himself about electric vehicles.
Now The Guardian is out with a new report that claims Tesla hate is on the rise, resulting in drivers experiencing more road rage.
While they try to link to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s antics on Twitter, the publication’s own new examples based on conversations with owners point to just regular EV hate:
Tesla drivers interviewed by the Guardian say they have experienced anti-Tesla sentiment, but mostly from those who hate electric vehicles rather than Musk specifically. “Random rude drivers will swerve in my lane to yell at me, or turn on a heavy diesel exhaust that blows black smoke,” Paul Albertson, who lives in Beaverton, Oregon, told the Guardian. It never happens when he drives his two other cars, a vintage 1948 Chevy and a 2014 Traverse. The culprits are most often men driving “larger pick-up trucks”, he said.
The publication gives five other examples from Tesla owners who say that they are experiencing road rage related to their vehicles.
They all have similar impressions that the hate is related to electric vehicles rather than Musk.
Electrek’s Take
If anything, Musk’s Twitter antics and asking people to vote Republican have likely only helped Tesla make progress with the right in the US.
Virtually all examples of Tesla hate leading to road rage or blocking charging stations that I have seen have been coming from right-wing pickup truck drivers who are uneducated about electric vehicles.
And in my own experience, if you sit down with one of them and you actually try to understand why they hate Tesla or EVs, they quickly realize that their hate is misguided.
I have a difficult time imagining a bleeding-heart liberal in a diesel truck rolling coal on a Tesla because Elon Musk is letting Donald Trump back on Twitter. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard to imagine.
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In a move that helps the brand duck protectionist anti-Chinese tariffs, Volvo Cars has switched production of its award-winning EX30 models destined for US roads from its Zhangjiakou plant in China to the Ghent facility in Belgium.
Volvo EX30 production began in the company’s Ghent factory back in April, but those first cars were earmarked for the Swedish domestic and European export markets, but that move wasn’t primarily motivated by avoiding tariffs. As Electrive reports, the company seemed happy enough to continue importing its small electric crossover from China and accepting the new 28.8% tariffs (up from 10%), but the wait times to get the vehicles shipped in from China was imply too long.
In 2024, Swedish and German buyers had to wait up to eight months for their EX30 in some cases, according to Volvo Cars’ European boss, Arek Nowinski, per Automotive News. Once production in Ghent is fully up to speed, however, wait times should be cut to about 90 days. Those wait times, and the price hike associated with the tariffs, have hurt sales of the originally Chinese-made Volvo EV. In 2024, for example, the EX30 ranked third in European EV sales, but slipped out of the top 10 first half of 2025.
“The car is now being built in Europe, which means faster delivery times,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson to Automotive News. “We should return to the sales and market share figures for the EX30 that we had before the introduction of tariffs.”
Coming to Staying in America
The EX30’s switch to Ghent is good news for American fans of the compact, lickety-quick Volvo EV. Now that it’s no longer exclusively made in China, Volvo has decided to give it a stay of execution as it revamps its US product lineup to better align with market trends (read: SUVs) and the changing political landscape (read: tariffs and inflation).
The reason? The Made in China version of the EX30 would virtually unsellable in the US due to the implementation of 147% tariffs on vehicles imported from China. Vehicles imported from Europe, meanwhile, carry just 15% tariffs, keeping the EX30 in a competitive price bracket.
Expect to see both Ghent and South Carolina play an increasingly large role in Volvo’s US product mix – at least for the next three-odd years.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo Cars, Automotive News, via Electrive.
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New filings have revealed that BYD is about to release a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar: the Yangwang U9 Track Edition.
BYD already shocked the world when it launched the Yangwang U9, its first all-electric supercar.
It featured four advanced electric motors with a combined power of nearly 1,300 horsepower. The U9 can accelerate from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in just 2.36 seconds.
With a motor at each wheel and a highly advanced electric-air suspension, the U9 can turn on itself and even jump over potholes.
But that was only the beginning.
Based on a new filing with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), BYD is preparing to launch a new ‘Track Edition’ of the Yangwang U9:
When an automaker releases a “track” version of a car, it typically primarily features body changes for better aerodynamic performance, adding downforce, and it will also often feature bigger brakes.
The Yangwang U9 ‘Track Edition’ appears to feature all that… and much more.
The filing reveals that BYD updated the motors at each wheel to a new 555 kW motor. That’s a higher-performing motor than in most performance electric vehicles. The U9 Track Edition has four of them for a total of 2,220 kW (3,019 hp).
I would have thought that this was a typo if it wasn’t for the insane electric vehicles coming out of China these days.
Here are a few pictures from the MIIT filing:
There are a lot of performance specs that are not included in the MIIT filing. Therefore, it will be interesting to see when the vehicle is fully unveiled and BYD reveals what kind of performance it can achieve with 3,000 hp packed in 4 electric motors.
Here are a few other features mentioned in the filing:
Standard features:
- 20-inch wheels with 325/35 R20 tyres
- Carbon-fibre roof
- Large fixed carbon-fibre rear wing
- Rear diffuser with adjustable blades for aerodynamic optimisation
Optional aerodynamic parts:
- Standard or enhanced carbon-fibre front splitter
- Electric rear wing
Electrek’s Take
How are they going to keep that thing from flying away? Seriously.
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