Attacks, direct actions and sabotage against Tesla have become commonplace in Western countries, especially over the past year, since Elon Musk publicly supported Donald Trump. In Germany, this trend has been developing for some time. This is due to two main factors:
1) the construction of the Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin, which employs 12,000 people and began production in March 2022.
2) Musk's vocal support for the far-right German party AfD - Alternative for Germany (from late 2024 onwards).
Initially, groups and individuals from the German autonomous, eco-anarchist and far-left spectrum began campaigning against Tesla as a symbol of “techno-capitalism” and “green capitalism”. This radical resistance to Tesla and other companies in the tech industry persists today and remains a defining characteristic of these militant groups' claims and attacks. However, anti-Tesla sentiment was surely reinforced further after Musk publicly and strongly supported the German far-right.
The “Volcano Group” versus the Tesla Gigafactory
Protests against the construction and later expansion of the Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide, located a few kilometers southeast of Berlin in the state of Brandenburg, have been ongoing for years. The protests are organized by environmental activists, far-left militants, and local residents. They all strongly oppose the factory, especially after the expansion plans were rejected in a local non-binding referendum that had no consequences.
However, this analysis does not focus on protests involving public demonstrations, civil disobedience, or peaceful land occupation. Rather, the focus here is solely on direct attacks against Tesla production and Tesla cars in Germany. This wave of sabotage originates from various radical anti-capitalist ideologies, including insurrectionary anarchism, eco-anarchism, anti-technology revolt, and militant antifascism.
One of the first significant acts of sabotage occurred on May 25–26, 2021, when six high-voltage cables supplying electricity to the Gigafactory construction site were set on fire (the construction site opened in 2020.)
The attack was followed by a responsibility claim that denounced Tesla as “neither green, ecological nor social. Tesla is a company exploiting land and peoples’ lives on a global scale, it relies on and produces colonial conditions. Our fire stands against the lies about green cars.”
The communiqué added that:
“Our attack is a call to attack the Green Deal” and “Elon Musk, owner and patriarch of Tesla, is for us only a representative of a caste of men who are united in their aggressive capitalist-technological will to modernize and their delusion of world domination.”
The long claim of responsibility was signed "Vulkangruppe: Gegen den Fortschritt der Zerstörung" ("Volcano Group: Against the Progress of Destruction").
The Vulkangruppe entity is believed to have been active since 2011. It is considered responsible for various arson attacks and acts of sabotage in the Berlin and Brandenburg areas. Probably emerging from the anarchist and eco-anarchist spectrum, the group has managed to remain elusive until now. The group's signatures, sometimes inspired by Icelandic volcano names, periodically change. This could be linked to an evolving composition or network, the use of the same ideological framework and wording by various groups, or more broadly, the political expression of insurrectionary anarchism, which primarily believes in the "propaganda of the deed" by affinity groups rather than fixed political forms. In line with this framework of informal insurrectionism, most responsibility claims for anti-Tesla acts of sabotage lack a group signature altogether. Instead, they often conclude with traditional calls to action or salutes honoring far-left and anarchist militants currently imprisoned in Europe.
The so-called Vulkangruppe was also responsible for one of the most effective acts of sabotage against the Tesla Gigafactory. In the early morning hours of March 5, 2024, an arson attack was carried out against an electrical pylon in the Gosen-Neu Zittau area near Grünheide. The pylon was crucial for the Gigafactory and the sabotage forced Tesla to halt production completely for several days. According to company calculations, the attack resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in production losses.
The "Vulkangruppe Tesla abschalten!" (Volcano Group Shut Down Tesla!) claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement (English translation):
“With our sabotage, we have set ourselves the goal of inflicting the largest possible blackout at the Gigafactory. We have ruled out endangering our lives and the lives of other people. The shutdown of production in the automotive industry is the beginning of the end of a world of destruction.”
“Our gift for March 8 (the International Women’s Day) is to shut down Tesla. Because the complete destruction of the Gigafactory and with it the cutting off of ‘techno-fascists’ like Elend Musk is a step on the path to liberation from the patriarchy”.
The group sarcastically used the name “Elend” (German for “misery”) instead of “Elon” Musk.
The lengthy communiqué emphasized that:
“In addition to the dirty battery factory, Tesla now wants to expand its factory site by a further 100 hectares, including a freight station” and that “‘green capitalism’ stands for colonialism, land theft, and an exacerbation of the climate crisis! Lithium batteries come from toxic mines in Chile and use up other rare metals, which means misery and destruction for those who live where the mines are. The battery factory in Grünheide near Berlin, for example, requires the rare raw material lithium, which is also mined in Bolivia”
Significative was also the claim of anti-surveillance anti-transhumanism sabotage, which asserted that:
“A Tesla vehicle is a surveillance device for public spaces. It is equipped all around with high-resolution cameras from Samsung” and “Artificial intelligence will register every movement and every mistake the driver makes, monetizing these by using the data to train the software for autonomous driving.”
The text continued with personal attacks against the "technofascist" Musk, reaching an almost situationist irony when discussing his space projects:
“our strong extra-planetary allies are already waiting for him; solar storms will crash his rocket, as they have already done to 30% of the satellites he has put in space before. So we will win.”
In another part of the text, the group thoroughly explained the methodology of the arson attack. This was done to ensure that the authorities and the media would quickly recognize the authenticity of the claim of responsibility.
Elon Musk quickly condemned the militants on his X platform, calling them the “dumbest eco-terrorists in the world.”
“Burn a Tesla” and “Fuck AfD”
Direct attacks on Tesla cars became increasingly common in Germany and throughout Europe. Currently, it is difficult to compile complete statistics on these attacks. Car arsons in Germany are not cataloged by brand, not all attacks are reported, and Tesla may not always publicize the fact that it has become such a specific and major target.
One of the first significant attacks on Tesla cars in Germany occurred in Frankfurt on the night of September 10-11, 2023. A claim of responsibility put the act into context within the then recent International Mobility Show (IAA) in Munich:
“That's why we torched a few new Teslas in Frankfurt last night. As a salute to the protests in Munich. As one of many attacks on the destructive automotive industry.”
“According to corporate logic, only a select few are entitled to own such cars. It is a question of class who drives or is allowed to drive these cars.”
The claim was signed “Switch Off – the system of destruction!”, the name of a movement and platform that emerged in 2023 and calls for a broad anti-technology and anti-capitalist revolt. (The "Switch Off" website is also one of the main sources of the communiqués analyzed here. Other sources are Indymedia and other militant websites).
In its latest report, published in May 2025, the German domestic intelligence agency BfV (the Office for the Protection of the Constitution) wrote that: “'Switch Off' is currently the most significant militant campaign in left-wing extremism. It offers violent left-wing extremists an opportunity to make a name for themselves with their actions, place these in a common ideological context and thus attract potential imitators.”
(Verfassungsschutzbericht, p. 161)
In February 2024, two attacks on Tesla in Berlin were promptly followed by a clear claim:
“On February 7, two Teslas were set on fire in Rummelsburg, and on February 8, two Tesla charging stations were set on fire on Vulkanstraße”.
The choice of Vulkanstraße (Volcano Street) in the German capital was hardly a coincidence. Although there is no proof that the same group or individuals were responsible, the communiqués of February 8 and March 5, 2024 (the latter following the aforementioned arson attack on the power pylon) have at least four strong structure similarities: they denounce Starlink as a military tool (for example in Ukraine and by Israel in Gaza), highlight the role of lithium in "green capitalism," criticize the Gigafactory's exploitation and water consumption, and attack Tesla car cameras' surveillance.
On the night of April 22, 2024, two Teslas burned in Alt-Stralau Street in Berlin-Friedrichshain. (In this case, no one claimed responsibility for the attack. This is similar to other cases mentioned in this analysis that remain unattributed and unclear.)
On the night of May 12, 2024, an act of sabotage was then carried out against Tesla vehicles at a dealership in Leipzig. “Unfortunately, technical errors apparently meant that only a few vehicles were hit, limiting the damage” said the unidentified group that claimed responsibility.
On the night between June 17 and 18, 2024, three Tesla cars burned in the Berlin district of Mitte. Other direct actions during those weeks included less intense attacks, such as spray-painting or acts of minor vandalism.
In July 2024, Elon Musk publicly endorsed Donald Trump, throwing his full support behind the Republican presidential campaign in the U.S. Later, in November of that year, a government crisis hit Germany, and new elections were announced soon after. In December 2024, Musk began heavily supporting the far-right party AfD - Alternative for Germany. A significant portion of Germans consider the AfD to be fully or partially neo-nazi. The domestic intelligence agency BfV has classified the party as an extremist right-wing entity (an appeal by the AfD is currently underway). Musk’s move surprised some liberal-conservatives on the German political spectrum. They used to think, and some still believe, that the Tesla-X-SpaceX entrepreneur is mostly a libertarian capitalist with whom they could discuss deregulation, free speech, and neoconservatism. Conversely, those who were already strongly opposed to Musk - including far-left, ecologist, and anarchist militants - found that their ideological framework was confirmed by their idea that techno-capitalism and techno-fascism are one and the same.
From an analytical point of view, it would be incorrect to conclude that most of the anti-Tesla attacks and sabotage in Germany since 2025 have been anti-AfD. Eco-anarchists and similar groups consider the entire liberal-democratic political spectrum beyond salvaging because of its capitalist foundations and technological logic. Their complete rejection of "green capitalism" has also targeted parties like the Greens (who were in a governing coalition until the end of 2024 and had Robert Habeck, a Green Party leader, as Economy Minister). Nevertheless, starting in 2025, Musk's association with AfD undoubtedly strengthened the most radical anti-Tesla stance within the broader far-left, anarchist, autonomous, and Antifa communities. For these groups, militant antifascism remains a most powerful incentive and a crucial call to action.
Between February 8 and 9, 2025, two Teslas burned in Dresden. In the night between February 11 and 12, 2025, a fire attack sabotaged a Deutsche Bahn railway in Berlin. An unidentified group claimed responsibility for the latter attack, explaining:
“Early this morning, we interrupted the railway line that transports thousands of Tesla workers from the capital to Grünheide every day, as well as freight trains carrying oil and gas from east to west, and set fire to a radio mast in the immediate vicinity of the railway cable shaft.”
The text sharply criticized the police's dismantling of the anti-Gigafactory camps in Grünheide, as well as the granting of permission to expand the factory against the "will of the people", concluding that:
"it goes well for techno-fascist and AfD fan Elon Musk."
The communiqué ended with the message, "Greetings to the anti-fascist Tesla arsonists from the U.S. to Dresden!", alluding to the growing number of anti-Tesla sabotage attacks in Western countries.
Between February 24 and 25, an arson attack occurred at a construction site in Berlin-Marzahn belonging to Strabag, an Austrian construction company involved in expanding the Gigafactory. Two construction cranes and some Deutsche Bahn signal cables were damaged. A new responsibility claim stated:
“No company embodies the new technocratic fascism as much as Tesla. Trump, Musk, and Weidel are the alliance of techno-fascists who give a face to the new patriarchal and colonial totalitarianism”.
Alice Weidel, one of the two leaders of the AfD, was hence mentioned directly, with Musk's AfD support becoming a key element of the attacks. The text added:
“Anyone who drives a Tesla is aligning themselves with Trump, Musk, and Weidel. Anyone who drives a Tesla is, at least indirectly, supporting Starlink, the AfD, the colonization of Mars, military logistics in wars, video surveillance on the streets, greenwashing, the destruction of nature, and fascist and patriarchal propaganda.”
Coinciding with the anniversary of the attack on the electricity pylon in the Gosen-Neu Zittau area on March 5, 2024, a new and comprehensive campaign was then launched in Europe on March 5, 2025, with the publication of a statement called "Welcome Spring, Burn a Tesla!” (in German: “Begrüßt den Frühling, zündet einen Tesla an!). The call was made for a widespread, molecular, and anarchist-spontaneist wave of Tesla car sabotages, declaring that the streets are “teeming” with Teslas that are “just waiting for you to attack them”. The call targeted Trump, Musk, and Tesla as crucial parts of a “connected ‘world’ and internet of things” that “takes away our direct connection to the world around us, while further increasing surveillance and control. Every Tesla has eight cameras and represents the smart city model: another obstacle to freedom”.
Technical suggestions for the sabotage were also provided:
“-In addition to the cameras on the street, a Tesla has eight cameras: don't forget to cover your face!
-Make sure you don't leave any fingerprints or DNA traces behind.
-A fire in an electric vehicle is particularly difficult to extinguish. This can be an advantage, but also a safety risk, if you don't want the fire to spread to the surrounding area.
-Whether you use barbecue lighter fluid or gasoline, a timer fuse or not, is entirely up to you... but above all: take care and have fun!”
On March 12, 2025, at around 1 a.m., a Tesla caught fire at the intersection of Pettenkofer Straße and Rigaer Straße in Berlin-Friedrichshain. On the night of March 13-14, unknown perpetrators set fire to several Teslas: three vehicles burned on different streets in Berlin-Steglitz, and another burned on Neue Krugallee in Berlin-Plänterwald. Then, on the night of March 28–29, seven Teslas burned in front of a car dealership in Ottersberg, Lower Saxony.
These attacks occurred in the same weeks as other major anti-Tesla sabotage episodes in different countries. On March 3, an arson in Plaisance-du-Touch, Toulouse destroyed 12 Teslas. An anti-authoritarian group claimed responsibility for the attack. On March 20, 2025, over 80 Tesla cars were damaged at a dealership in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. On March 31, an arson destroyed 17 Teslas at a dealership in the Torrenova area in Rome. Elon Musk quickly condemned the attack in Italy as “terrorism”. Nearly a month later, on April 25 (Italy's national day of Liberation from nazi-fascism), an anarchist group claimed responsibility for the attack, stating: "The only Tesla we like is the one that burns... And how well it burns!"
In mid-April, Der Spiegel reported that German police, primarily from local Landeskriminalamt (LKA) offices, had started to address the growing number of attacks on Tesla cars.
On April 26, perpetrators attempted to set fire to two Tesla cars in Leipzig by throwing a spray can containing pyrotechnics. The damage was minor, but a police spokesperson said that the can had the following written on it:
"Fuck Tesla" and "Fuck AfD."
In the early morning hours of April 27, a brand new Tesla Model Y burned in Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Lower Saxony.
On April 29, 12 cars caught fire at the Tesla delivery center in Holzgerlingen, Baden-Württemberg.
On April 29, a long text signed "Vulkangruppe Friede den Hütten..." ("Volcano Group Peace to the Huts...") claimed responsibility for fire attacks on a radio mast and a transformer station that supplies power to the Grunewald neighborhood in Berlin. Many of the villas in this area are owned by wealthy and influential families, oligarchs, and foreign embassies. The text promoted slogans such as "Eat the Rich!" and also mentioned Tesla:
“Tesla is finished. Internationally, Tesla is under attack practically every day. #TeslaTakeDown and militant attacks are causing profit losses of over 70%. (If you are a Tesla owner reading this, you should sell your car while it still fetches some money and isn't on fire. Or set it on fire yourself and collect the insurance money. Just don't let your own car film you doing it.)”
The international "Tesla Takedown" protests are nonviolent. However, sabotage militants highlighted here the global impact of an entire and multifaced anti-Tesla movement.
On the night of May 7, another Tesla was burned in Berlin-Karlshorst. After that, other incidents followed. However, the wave of burning Teslas appears to have peaked in Germany in March and April of 2025.
Thus far, German authorities have made few to no arrests in cases of anti-Tesla sabotage and direct actions, especially concerning the most successful attacks.
Starting in June 2025, Elon Musk began to retire from his most vocal political activism, while also straining his relationship with Donald Trump. However, Musk's support for the German AfD appears to remain unchanged. Given the consistent and deeply rooted ideological framework of anti-Tesla saboteurs, it would be shortsighted to expect the attacks to end easily, especially in Germany. Sabotage on Tesla's production, infrastructure, and cars will likely continue and possibly become chronic, albeit sporadic. Waves of attacks may reemerge and intensify quickly in the short and long term.
 | A guest post by
|