Suddenly, the Electric Vehicles That Many Consider “Not as Good as the Tesla Model Y” May Have Some Interest At Dealerships Due to Anti-Elon Musk Sentiment

The fashion world can turn on a dime. Today’s hot styles will be tomorrow's stonewashed mom jeans. Humans are fickle. When they buy things, they want to have a positive feeling about the item. When the item costs fifty grand, all the more so. That’s why it seems pretty likely that Tesla’s decline in sales that began in 2024 will accelerate in 2025. It’s not because the vehicles are any less awesome. Factually, they keep getting better and better. It’s just that for a big chunk of the country, Elon Musk is now out of fashion.

People feel so strongly anti-Tesla that they are reportedly being arrested while bringing firebombs to Tesla dealerships. Nutjobs stand at corners and scream at people driving Teslas in fancy-pants towns in Boston. Who needs this kind of bad vibe related to the second most expensive purchase of their lives Nobody. 

Here at Torque News, we are blessed to have the opportunity to test and review battery electric vehicles on a regular basis. We do our level best to report honestly on the EVs we review. Our leader, Armen, has always made it clear that there is some good in all cars. People too. Our job is to find it. When I review a car, I report on important things that are missing. For example, Tesla vehicles are all missing Apple CarPlay. That is a fact, not a personal opinion or taste. So, I would include something like that in a review to educate shoppers.

Every car has something “wrong” with it. From an insider’s perspective, I can tell you that for the past decade or so, many EV reviewers would test and report on an EV and they would always mentally compare it to a similar Tesla and say, “Well its range is not as good as the Tesla Model S3XY…” You get the point. Tesla was the benchmark, and every automaker had to justify their new EV in a direct comparison to a Tesla model. 

Now it’s 2025, and people are painting swastikas on Tesla cars and going bonkers about Elon Musk in road rage incidents. It will not be long before the buying public start to shy away from Tesla cars if this continues. They will look for a $50K electric crossover to buy that they don’t need to worry will be keyed as soon as they walk away from it. 

It was in this light that I drove a media test vehicle to my favorite hidden gem of a restaurant in my old hometown recently. When I arrived and parked, literally every private vehicle on the street was electrified. No exceptions. I counted four battery-only crossovers and four Prius cars. We sure have come a long way when you can see nothing but green electrified vehicles anywhere you look. All of the battery-only crossovers were Tesla Model Ys except one. The Toyota bZ4X I was testing. 

The last time I was in a dealership to buy a new car, Toyota was almost giving away bZ4Xs. They were putting $8,500 cash on the dash to augment the generous Massachusetts EV rebate of $3,500. Before even saying “Can you do a little better,” a shopper was starting with a discount of five figures! Nothing equals up the playing field when cross-shopping cars like a massive discount. 

For a long time, Tesla had an ace up its sleeve. Only Tesla owners could charge on a reliable, reasonably not slow DC charging network called the Tesla Supercharger network. This was Tesla’s biggest single advantage, based on my expert insights. And then…Tesla gave away its single biggest reason for shoppers to choose the brand and opened up the Supercharger network to all the other EVs. I still can’t believe it happened. It's like KFC and Coke got together and published their secret formulas just to be nice guys. Crazy. There will be marketing classes built around this move someday. 

The truth is that Tesla vehicles themselves have never been my favorite picks. At one outlet where they trust me to name the best EVs, I chose the Chevy Bolt until Chevy killed it off due to its huge success. With no Bolt to choose, my pick became the Hyundai Ioniq 5. These are fantastic cars I would choose - all things considered - over a Tesla any day. Now that one important thing to consider is that your Tesla’s resale value may be zilch due to the company’s leader being so bold as to try to help the government uncover waste, fraud and abuse, the choice not to pick the Tesla would be a no-brainer. 

I live the EV life. My wife and I own an electrified car. I test EVs and EV chargers, and I go to events where manufacturers preview the latest technology before it is released. So, for a long time, I’ve known that there are some great alternatives to Tesla. My take is that some of the former "ugly ducklings" of the EV world are about to be viewed as swans. 

John Goreham is a credentialed New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on Linkedin and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John's by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ grammar and punctuation software when proofreading and he also uses image generation tools. 

All images by John Goreham.