Libération / Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Since September, a strange phenomenon has hit the streets of the Deux-Sèvres prefecture: about once a month, a vehicle from Elon Musk’s factories catches fire. “Libé” followed the pyromaniac’s footsteps until he was found [A Libé writer posted an ad about Indy Nantes and the compas were kind enough to reply; NdAtt.]
The thick smoke from Ivana’s electronic cigarette crashes against the window of her Tesla. “When I park it now, I choose a place where there’s a lot of traffic and cameras,” explains the twenty-something. In Niort (Deux-Sèvres), where this saleswoman works, a strange phenomenon has been roaming the streets since September. At least once a month, somewhere in town, a car from the famous American brand catches fire in the dead of night. A sort of Russian roulette of burnt-out tires. A werewolf game with a burnt-out car. In the parking lot alone, where her electric vehicle is refueled, the flames raged in October, and since then, no driver has risked taking the time off to recharge. The young woman is furious: “It’s shameful, we don’t burn cars for political reasons, just as we don’t buy a Tesla for Elon Musk.”
Faced with these serial fires, the hypothesis of an anti-Musk action is the first to be considered. Demonstrations, scratched vehicles, burning dealerships… In recent times, the damage done to the billionaire’s brand has been mounting as a result of the antics of its big boss. Especially since the Nazi salute by Trump’s right-hand man in January. Support for the far right and outright cuts in US administrations are, moreover, one of the explanations for Tesla’s 13% drop in sales in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the same period last year, and the collapse of the Austin-based brand’s share price by more than half since its record high on December 17, 2024. But in the case of Niort, doubt still hangs in the air: is the richest man in the world the target of the perpetrator, who is still wanted?
For a start, the dates don’t coincide: the first fires took place long before the big boss’s controversial gesture. Secondly, in addition to the dozen or so burnt-out Teslas, at least two luxury vehicles were also targeted. A Porsche and an Aston Martin. In the city’s beige streets, blackish marks now blend into the scenery. Here on charred branches, there on a once immaculate palisade. Libé followed these traces and traced them back to Niort’s serial arsonist.
Stéphan’s jinx
Right now, a lot of people are giving Stéphan a hard time. Colleagues, for one. “They asked me if I’d tried barbecuing,” says the construction salesman and vegetarian. And the firemen, too. “You again?” they taunted him on March 10. For the second time in a few months, the firemen put out a blaze just down the road from his home on the Route d’Aiffres. Once again, the flames reduced a white Tesla, his company vehicle, to ashes.
The first time was on September 15. “My neighbors had heard noises and voices, but at first I thought it was accidental”, says the forty-something with thin glasses. By the second Tesla HS, the doubt had dissipated. That night, the police arrived, very annoyed. Twenty minutes earlier, their patrol had passed the allée du Niortais without observing anything unusual. “We’ve been keeping an eye on all Tesla cars for some time now,” the officers explain.
By this time, they had also been looking for the culprit for some time. Since September, the Niort public prosecutor’s office has been investigating “wilful destruction by fire”. But for the time being, the serial arsonist continues to evaporate. Without ever leaving a clue as to his motives. From his living room, Stéphan has a view of the still-charred parking space. He looks wistfully at a bush that has also been hit: “The leaves hid the road in summer… It’s a shame.” At his feet, his dog, a shih tzu with matted hair, sighs in unison.
Didier’s zen
Bermuda shorts, tanned legs and surfer-style beaded bracelets, Didier lives just a few yards from Stéphan, in a quiet neighborhood on Boulevard Charles-Baudelaire. Didier describes himself as “the sixth of the gang”. Meaning: the sixth to see his Tesla burned at the stake on November 18. When the fire department arrived that night, the owner was stunned. The fire had started in front of his picket fence, right next to another of his vehicles: his precious Volkswagen combi. The latter’s right-hand door was starting to catch fire, but no matter. Didier climbed aboard, started it up and moved it. His neighbor, Stéphan, is still laughing: “I think he got a bit of a scolding.”
Didier never considered the possibility of anti-Musk action. In fact, the man from Niort has little use for the billionaire. Unemployed when the fire broke out, he bought his Model 3 for 40,000 euros in 2023, hoping to resell it a year later. Ideally, a little more expensive. “The problem is that Elon Muska has decided to lower the price of new cars,” he laments. The other problem is that all that’s left of the car is the boot. And the 35,000 euros the insurance company was kind enough to pay him.
To unmask the culprit, the 50-year-old checked his garden camera. But on the images, no one. Only “a ball of fire” flickered. With hindsight, Didier prefers to laugh about it: “I liked my Tesla, it was a lazy car with only one pedal. A child’s disappointed pout: “A Renault Zoe.”
Simon’s problem
“Your right front tire is deflated.” Simon received this notification at 2:18 am on October 15, just as his car was burning to a crisp. He, too, had lost his Tesla just outside his home on Avenue de Limoges. The kind of road on which cars graze houses all day long. “A policeman told me that a Schweppes can filled with petrol had been found in a bush near another fire. But I haven’t heard anything since,” reports the 24-year-old.
A cybersecurity trainee, Simon commuted from Niort to Nantes for work. 1 h 40 there, 1 h 40 back. After the fire, the student with the blonde curls had to make do, between loaning a vehicle and carpooling. “I ended up thinking I was going to be fired,” he recalls. Finally, a solution was found: on days when Simon didn’t have a car, he took the train to his company’s headquarters… in Paris. Three times farther than Nantes, but more accessible from Niort. “I’ve tried countless times to ask Tesla for a gesture, but I’ve been turned down,” he regrets bitterly. Libé, who also contacted the company for information, wasn’t much luckier.
Who did it? The expert report concluded only that the fire had started in the right front corner of his car. For a while, the young man hoped to solve the mystery using Sentinel Mode, a feature that films the area around his Tesla. But the USB key storing the images was also destroyed by the flames. Simon now has only one meagre clue: an attempt to open his door handle, recorded by the vehicle at 2:16 am.
Christian’s blues
The flowers in his store exude joie de vivre. But Christian’s gaze is lost in emptiness. The 47-year-old business owner is still reeling from the loss of his car on October 22. He plays the film over and over again. His wife’s birthday at a nice restaurant, the choice of going there in his favorite car, and finally the decision to “let it sleep” once, “just once”, in the street. Once too often: his Aston Martin also went up in flames. I’m not a millionaire,” he says, ”I bought this car for 55,000 euros. It was the fruit of hard work and sacrifice. It was my dream, and I had every intention of growing old in it,” he recounts, with a lump in his throat.
It was the sound of his car’s horn going crazy that woke him up that evening. In his socks, the forty-year-old rushed out into the street: like Simon’s, his car was parked on Avenue de Limoges. And like the student’s, the flames had started on the front right-hand side of the car. The expert report confirmed that the fire was deliberate. “This car had a superb design. When I was feeling a bit down, I’d take it for a spin and it would get better. When I saw it, I always had this little crush, like a lover,” says Christian. In his eyes, a gleam shines. But then it immediately fades: “What did I do wrong to the people who burned her?” he asks.
The anger of the arsonist
In October and November, two Tesla fires struck the Niort station parking lot. Remains of burnt aluminum still litter the ground. On November 28, a vehicle burst into flames on avenue Léo-Lagrange. One of the shutters of the owner’s house, blackened and crumpled by the flames, remains down. Lately, the serial burner has extended his area of action to Chauray, about 12 km from Niort. Two Tesla cars belonging to a mutual insurance company went up in flames on March 18. Mayor Claude Boisson (no party label) was astonished: “We’re a very quiet town, and vehicles don’t burn here. Or if they do, it’s because of a short-circuit.”
On the same day as the fire, an intriguing publication appeared on the Internet. On the militant site Nantes Indymedia [or here; NdAtt.], an article signed by “anarchists” reported: “In order to shake up the daily lives of petit-bourgeois, or at least, individuals behaving as such, fifteen of their cars were set on fire in the Niort region.” These fires were not accidental, they insist, without claiming responsibility for them.
Libé tried to contact the author. One day, it received an anonymous e-mail: “Our exchanges will take place via encryption only.” Condition accepted. “I’m one of the activists behind these actions”, the Internet user introduces himself. As proof, he provides us with a list of the precise addresses of some of the traffic lights. And the license plates involved. We ask him about his motives. From the outset, he clarifies: “Elon Musk’s Nazi salute was not the trigger.” Even if the gesture did, he concedes, “strengthen the anti-capitalist and anti-fascist cause, by publicly establishing a clear link between capitalism and the rise of the far right, particularly Nazism”.
According to our interlocutor, the militants wanted to target “the bourgeoisie”. “Because it’s indecent and provocative that some people can afford to buy and parade around in the street in luxury vehicles […] while others are barely surviving”, he says indignantly. Why did he target Tesla cars in particular? Because it’s “a Big Brother on wheels, and in a society in which technology is taking on an ever-growing role to the detriment of freedoms and the environment, it’s more than necessary to take action”. The way they conduct their fight, he admits, is unlikely to be “heard by the owners of the burnt-out cars”. Nevertheless, he continues. In a final exchange, he is asked if he plans to take out the lighter again soon: “Direct action will continue as long as I live, in different forms and in different places.”
Source: Attaque