Tesla site targeted with ‘incendiary’ devices a week after Musk claimed people ‘want to kill’ him

“Incendiary” devices were found in a Tesla showroom in Texas on Monday, as violence and protests surrounding Elon Musk and his involvement with US president Donald Trump’s administration – not least in the form of his work over at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – continues to escalate.

Tesla trade-ins have reached a record high, those who still own a car have been getting creative in order to prevent their vehicles from being vandalised, and one doxxing website has published details of Tesla showrooms and owners amid all the backlash.

Now, in a statement shared with CBS Austin, Austin Police Department (APD) said its officers responded to a “found/abandoned hazardous call” at the Tesla dealership at “approximately 8:04am”.

“When officers arrived on scene, they located suspicious devices and called the APD bomb squad to investigate.

“The devices, which were determined to be incendiary, were taken into police custody without incident. This is an open and ongoing investigation, and there is no further information available for release at this time,” they said.

The incident comes after Musk told Fox News last week that people “basically want to kill me” because of the work he is doing over at Doge.

“It turns out when you take away the money people are receiving fraudulently, they get very upset, and they basically want to kill me because I’m stopping their fraud, and they want to hurt Tesla, because we’re stopping this terrible waste and corruption in the government.

“I guess they’re bad people. Bad people do bad things,” he said.

At the time, social media users responded to the comments by criticising Musk’s “lack of self-awareness”:

Namely that Musk himself is doing “bad things” by firing a load of federal workers:

Trump has also condemned the violence, branding those involved “terrorists” – and Musk agrees with the description, as does FBI director Kash Patel, who described the acts as “domestic terrorism” on Monday.

“There is no doubt that shooting bullets into Tesla stores and burning down Superchargers are acts of terrorism,” Musk wrote on Twitter/X.

Why not read…

• Did JD Vance really criticise Elon Musk for making him ‘look bad’ in ‘leaked’ audio?
• Tesla owners are facing a new problem amid Elon Musk backlash

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