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.