Saahal Desai likes the risk. For an experience reported in the pages of his newspaper The Atlantic, the man rented a cybertruck, the famous Tesla electric pick-up imagined by the sulphurous Elon Musk. What happens when we drive this vehicle in the capital of the United States?, He wonders. It was not long in having an answer: insults, cries, fingers of honor, hostility is palpable and experience more than unpleasant. The journalist experienced a ordeal that he summed up in this way: the “Cybertruck is a 3,200 kilos Rorschach test».
Saahal Desai is not naive, if he found himself behind the wheel it was that he wanted to lead a “journalistic experience to understand what it is to be driving the most hated car in America». The machine has become the purest incarnation of everything that opponents of Elon Musk – and by extension to Donald Trump – hate. A short day in the streets of Washington, DC allowed him to collect 17 fingers of honor, many insults, but also mockery and a strong feeling of contempt.
People seated for a brunch and the indicator pass and laughed and laughed at him. One of them considered aloud to launch eggs: “While I was at a stop, windows down, in a street in the district of Mount Pleasant, recallsa woman gave me a black look since her porch: “Go give up, you, this truck, and Elon” she shouted. “You drive a Nazi truck.”The woman slammed her door before reopening it to add: “I hope someone will explode your shit.»»
Saahal Desai was not likely, Washington is surely the place in the United States where Elon Musk is the most hated in 2025. It is a safe bet that this trip is not representative of the average experience of the Cybertruck driver. “HASnear everything, pointed out the journalistit is the radioactive epicenter of the DOGE explosion department.»»
Doge’s fault
At the country level, the cars produced by Tesla, and more particularly its pick-up, nevertheless generated negative reactions and waves of indignation. Vandalism, attacks on the incendiary bomb, shots, electric vehicles are a target for opponents of Elon Musk. The billionaire’s public image has deteriorated strongly since it has become the most fervent support (and patronage) of Donald Trump. Its multiple escapades, its funding for the republican campaign up to $ 300 million (around 273 million euros) and its unambiguous rallying to the ideas of the conspiratorial extreme right were only the beginning.
It was his work within the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) which has completed the anti-Musk feeling. The brutal dismantling of the federal government to which he is used with zeal led to the dismissal of tens of thousands of employees, and negative repercussions in the United States as in the world are likely to be legion. The rejection of the richest man in the world is such that “the administration and its security device have tightened the ranks, explains Futurism. The FBI launched a new special unit to suppress Tesla’s vandals, qualifying these acts of “inner terrorism”».
The multiple setbacks suffered by Cybertruck since its launch certainly did not help. Its strange appearance and its high cost still pass, but its relative reliability and its design defects have made it the perfect target of mockery for anti-Musk who did not ask for so much.
Saahal Desai still specifies having received some signs of encouragement such as lifted thumbs, in particular by crossing areas very frequented by tourists. One person told him that it was “great”, a child shouted “Cybertruck!” And … that’s about it. “”Cybertruck’s disaster is not that it is ugly, or unconventional, or ridiculously angular, concludes the journalist. It is that, for most people, this car just is not worth driving.»»
