UnPlug Musk: A New Movement to Shutter Tesla Showrooms

The rebel alliance is forming.

The backlash against Tesla EVs continues, with some folks taking a page out the Republican playbook from a few years ago when Elon Musk was trying to overcome independent car dealership laws in many states.

(By the way, that's why Musk is spending $2 million on the election of a Wisconsin judge, trying to overturn Wisconsin's dealership laws.)

With sales largely online, Tesla at the time wanted to open its own dealerships, something shunned by various state laws requiring automotive dealerships be independent from automotive manufacturers. Many republicans sought to block Tesla from opening showrooms in their states, including Missouri's Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe, who back in 2014 when he was a state senator, helped write such a bill.

Everyone certainly knows now.

Since then, Tesla largely won out, with over 250 dealerships in the United States (accurate counts are not something Tesla believes in, so specific numbers are difficult to come by). Now an attorney in Missouri has come up with a way to close those dealerships by rescinding exceptions that states gave to Elon Musk.

Called UnPlug Musk, the new committee and initiatives are the brainchild of Brad Ketcher, a St. Louis attorney who was chief of staff to Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan in the 1990s. The initiatives are based on those co-written by Kehoe. They require 106,384 signatures to get on the ballot by next spring. We at OntheRoadtoAutonomy.com are guessing they won't have any trouble reaching that target.

Interviewed by the Missouri Independent, Ketcher said: “They’ve given us plans for the Death Star. And when when somebody gives you the plans for Death Star, you know what to do.”