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Embarrassed to be driving a Tesla these days? You’re not alone.
Tesla is ubiquitous. Following Election Day, the company’s shares broke the $1 trillion mark, making the electric vehicle manufacturer more valuable than the next 15 automakers combined. Much of that is because Elon Musk’s company is likely to benefit from its CEO having President-elect Donald Trump’s ear. But it’s also because Teslas are good EVs — the Model Y is one of Heatmap’s top picks for someone who wants to make a stress-free switch away from gasoline.
The problem is, well, Elon. Though 35% of respondents to a Heatmap poll last winter said the controversial and erratic executive made them more likely to want to purchase a Tesla, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t be caught dead in an EV that in any way benefits the newly minted government efficiency crusader.
But what about all those people who purchased Teslas before Musk went full MAGA? For them, there’s a solution in the form of bumper stickers produced by Matthew Hiller of Waikiki, Hawaii. Hiller’s side hustle, Mad Puffer Stickers, gives Tesla owners a way to disavow the company’s CEO in the form of a no Elon sticker, an Anti-Elon Tesla Club sticker, or one that spells it all out: “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.” As you might expect, business is booming.
Last night, I caught up with Hiller about his unexpected success. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How did you begin making anti-Elon Musk stickers?
I started making stickers on my own before the Elon sticker. I work at an aquarium, so I did a lot of fish stickers. I always had an interest in making stickers — I knew how to make them, and how to put the designs and cute phrases on them.
The point came in maybe February or January of 2023. I had been wanting to buy a Tesla, but at that point, I started to notice how far off the rails Elon had been going. When he bought Twitter, he started extreme censoring of information, taking verification marks off The New York Times and things like that to sow discontent, disinformation, and push his agenda. And it was ugly. I couldn’t believe this man was using his power like this, and I immediately did not want to support him in any way. I figured, there’s no way I’m buying a Tesla — but there have got to be so many people who are so embarrassed to be repping him on the streets driving their Teslas and who want to completely disavow this guy. Because I know I would want to sell mine immediately after I saw what he was doing.
So I made the first sticker, which said, “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.” I printed up a very small run at first and just threw it in my shop. It took a while for the first sale, but after it got rolling, some people started posting pictures. It went viral a couple of times and I would see a burst of sales, and then it would quiet down. I would be selling five to seven a day, and then suddenly, there would be 50 a day because someone else talked about it on Reddit.
And now, at this point, it’s gone insane.
Have your sales gone up since the election?
Absolutely. Unbelievably.
There were major points when the sales spiked beyond anything that had happened before. The first time was when Elon went on stage with Trump at one of the rallies, and that solidified what everybody already knew: that he was in the tank for Trump, and he was going to put his full fortune behind getting the guy elected.
Then after the election, there was another huge bunch of sales because people were like, “Oh my God, this guy is now going to have a part in this government.” This was so in-your-face and so disgusting — he’s just filling Trump’s coffers with his money in exchange for position and power and influence. And it showed in the sales that other people thought so, too: I must have sold probably 250 or 300 that day, and it’s been steady ever since. I can barely keep up. My full-time job is at the aquarium, and I come home and pack stickers until 11 p.m. It’s just me and my wife doing it all.
Can you give me a ballpark of how many you’ve sold?
Definitely over 10,000. I think today we’re at about 180 [per day] — and that’s across all my stickers, not just the anti-Elon sticker. But it’s been around 100-plus every day for weeks now. It’s rough.
Which is the most popular design?
The most popular is the OG, the “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.” It’s the only one that I have that is a traditional long bumper sticker, rectangular. And I’m a little upset that it’s the most popular because it’s the hardest one to ship because of the odd-size envelopes. For all the other ones, it’s easier. But that’s the most popular one by far.
It’s currently the No. 4 best-selling bumper sticker on Amazon. It had been #1 at a few different points. At one point it was beating both Trump and Kamala stickers. And I was like, “That’s insane. People hate Elon more than they love Trump or Kamala?”
Have you sold to any Cybertruck owners, as far as you’re aware?
I have no idea. I don’t think so — I mean, everyone knew he was crazy by the time the Cybertruck came out. People buying the Cybertruck are all in.
I saw on Instagram that you dropped off some stickers at a Tesla dealership?
That was a while ago. I didn’t take stickers; I believe I had a key chain at that point. I dropped them around the store just for the heck of it, to try to drum up some interest in anti-Elon sentiment. Maybe it’d find the right person, you never know. I wish I had more time to focus on social media, but I just don’t.
Do you have any more anti-Elon sticker design plans?
There’s one that’s a little more general, and it just says, “No more billionaires.” Elon is the main problem: He’s probably the worst billionaire, but he’s not the only problem. So maybe that sticker will end up on a Tesla, too.
Will you keep making your fish stickers now that your anti-Elon business has taken off?
Yeah. I have the ideas banked, I just don’t bother printing them at this point. There’s no point — I’m swamped with what I’ve got. But yeah, absolutely. If I have a really good one, I’ll print it for the aquarium, but not my own personal store. At this point, I’m all Elon, all the time.
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On Israel and Iran, G7, and clean-energy jobs
Current conditions: Fairbanks will “cool” to 85 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday after NOAA issued the first heat advisory in Alaska’s history over the weekend • Nashville’s total rainfall for the year is 33.25 inches, making it the city’s wettest since 1979 • It could hit 124 degrees Fahrenheit in Ar Rabiyah, Kuwait, today, potentially setting a new hottest temperature of June so far.
An Israeli strike on the Shahran oil depot in Tehran.Stringer/Getty Images
Oil analysts and investors are bracing for further escalation after Israel and Iran’s attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure this weekend. On Saturday, Iran reported that Israel had struck its natural gas processing facility near the South Pars field, as well the main fuel depot in Tehran — targets that “suggest Israel is attempting to weaken and disrupt Iran’s domestic gas and fuel supply chains to cause shortages, rather than pursuing the country’s oil and gas production or exports, which would rock the markets,” the Financial Times writes. Iran responded on Saturday by hitting an Israeli refinery and damaging pipelines north of Tel Aviv. Israel preemptively cut off the natural-gas flow from its oil fields in case those pipelines become additional targets, with Egypt and Jordan reporting they’ve already seen disruptions to their supplies as a result, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Iran has the second-largest natural gas reserves and the fourth-largest crude oil reserves in the world, and is the third-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The country has also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major transit route for a third of the world’s oil, although many analysts are skeptical of such a threat, given that it would also cut off Iran’s own export route to its biggest customer, China, Bloomberg reports. While some analysts expect President Trump to call on OPEC+ to increase its production capacity if the global oil supply is disrupted, “it’s unclear whether the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could offset a severe and prolonged outage in Iran, which pumps around 3.4 million barrels a day,” Bloomberg adds. Brent crude rose 5.5% to $78.32 a barrel at the start of trading on Monday morning, after gaining 7% on Friday — the most in three years.
The Group of Seven summit begins today in western Alberta, but in a break with precedent, climate policy will not be on the agenda. Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, and Britain will reportedly take pains to avoid “riling” President Trump at the meeting in Kananaskis, The Washington Post reports, while Bloomberg notes that “other G7 leaders won’t even try for a statement of unity on matters such as Ukraine or climate change.” Since 1975, the group has “dedicated an average of 5% of its declarations to climate change at each summit,” The Global Governance Project reports, and it has made “496 climate commitments, taking 6% of the total on all subjects.” But despite the hesitancy to contradict the U.S., certain climate policies will be “integrated into the agenda, a senior government official told a briefing this week, pointing to an effort to improve the international joint response to the growing global forest fire threat,” per the BBC.
The Republican budget bill could potentially threaten 2 million jobs, a new report by BlueGreen Alliance found. In addition to 300,000 direct manufacturing jobs that may be lost if the GOP follows through on eliminating the corresponding tax credits, the report also found that a million indirect jobs (like “supply chain jobs, providing parts for auto or clean energy manufacturing”) and 643,000 induced jobs (like “restaurant workers, store clerks, and the other types of jobs you’d see when an area increases in population or has more money to spend”) are also at risk of evaporating, Electrek notes. Georgia alone could lose 258,000 jobs. “Every bit of data shows clearly that repealing these credits will hurt working Americans,” Ted Fertik, the vice president of manufacturing and industrial policy at BlueGreen Alliance, said in a statement. “We hope the Senate will see reason and reverse these damaging provisions.”
The European Commission, which is set to propose a cut-off date for the European Union’s imports of Russian gas, will not propose similar limits on the nation’s nuclear fuel, Reuters reported Monday. Russia currently supplies the bloc with 38% of its enriched uranium and 23% of its raw uranium, and five EU countries use Russian-designed reactors intended to run on Russian fuel. “The question about nuclear is, of course, complicated, because we need to be very sure that we are not putting countries in a situation where they do not have the security of supply,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen said. Though the announcement was a reversal from the Commission’s statement in June that it would target Russian enriched uranium, Jorgensen added that “we’re working as fast as we can to also make that a part of the proposal.”
In case you missed it, late last week Meta announced a deal with XGS Energy to add 150 megawatts of geothermal electricity in New Mexico to help the company power its local expansion into artificial intelligence. XGS specifically uses a closed-loop system to prevent water from escaping as it extracts geothermal energy from the rock, which is “especially crucial in a drought-prone state like New Mexico,” The Verge writes. The goal is for the facility to be operational by 2030.
Though the deal between Meta and XGS is no larger than a separate geothermal deal the tech company struck with Sage Geosystems last year, the proposal would still “represent about 4% of total U.S. geothermal production,” Reuters reports. Meta also announced a nuclear agreement with Constellation Energy earlier this month. My colleague Matthew Zeitlin has more on the tech clean-power buying spree, which you can read about here.
The world’s biggest sand battery is now operating in the small municipality of Pornainen, Finland. The nearly 50-foot wide, 43-foot-tall tank is filled with sand that is capable of storing 1 megawatt of thermal power from excess solar and wind electricity, and which can be used to meet one month of Pornainen’s heat demands in the summer or a week of its demands in the winter, per its owner, Polar Night Energy.
How the perpetually almost-there technology could get shut out of the Inflation Reduction Act’s surviving nuclear tax credits.
The House offered a last minute olive branch to the increasingly bipartisan nuclear industry when it passed its version of the budget reconciliation bill now working its way through the Senate, opting to preserve tax credit eligibility for so-called “advanced nuclear facilities” that start construction by 2029. That deadline will be difficult for many nuclear companies to meet, regardless of their technological approach or reactor size. But one much anticipated, potentially world-changing technology won’t even have a shot: nuclear fusion.
That’s not because fusion is so futuristic that the 2029 deadline would be categorically unworkable. As I keep hearing, the tech is finally, possibly, actually on the verge of commercialization, and some industry leaders such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems could probably break ground on a commercial reactor by then.
Fusion won’t have a shot simply because, as defined by Congress and the IRS, it does not fall within the category of an “advanced nuclear facility.” Instead, it’s defined and regulated as a separate class of zero-emission technology, thus excluding it from the nuclear carve out in the budget bill. That distinction was made clear in January, when the IRS released its final regulations for the Inflation Reduction Act, Julien Barber, an investor in multiple fusion technologies at Emerson Collective, told me. That separation happened because “we wanted to regulate them differently,” he said.
Fusion reactors can’t melt down and don’t produce the kind of highly radioactive nuclear waste that fission does, meaning that many of the safety constraints on conventional nuclear don’t apply to fusion. In 2023, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided to regulate fusion reactors more like particle accelerators, which are typically licensed at the state level, have fewer siting constraints, less stringent security requirements, and are often exempt from full environmental review. Last year, a bipartisan group of senators worked together to pass the Fusion Energy Act, which confirmed the NRC’s decision to separate the regulatory processes.
If the Senate approves the House’s version of the clean energy investment and production tax credits, fusion energy will be subject to the same tight restrictions as other clean energy solutions. The timeline for credit eligibility requires energy projects to begin construction a mere 60 days after the bill’s passage, and be placed in service by 2029. That, Barber said, is “essentially impossible for any of the fusion companies out there.” Brian Berzin, CEO of the fusion startup Thea Energy, agreed. “Most private fusion companies will be left unable to benefit from these financial incentives,” he wrote in an emailed statement.
There’s confusion, however, around whether this fusion exclusion was a deliberate decision from the House or simply an oversight. Barber is betting on the latter.
“This was happening quickly,” Barber told me. “There was some push by some of the companies in the [Fusion Industry Association] to review the language, but they just didn’t have time to review the language in time to write comments, and it just kind of got pushed through as is.”
The bill’s final language also took the CEO of the Fusion Industry Association, Andrew Holland, by surprise. “We had heard that fusion would be part of the carve out too, but then it wasn’t,” Holland told me.
A more pessimistic interpretation is also possible, Barber conceded. “There’s the idea that people don’t think fusion is ever going to be the case,” he told me. Certainly for some both in and out of government, fusion represents a dream perpetually deferred.
What Barber thinks many people fail to realize, though, is that some fusion industry leaders are operating on timelines similar to fission companies building small modular reactors. “If you talk to CFS, they’re going to say, We’re going to be putting our first power plant on the grid by the early 2030s, which is the same timeline as [small modular reactor company] X-energy, right?”
Until this moment, the distinction that top governing bodies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have made between fusion and fission has been nothing but a positive for fusion companies and advocates alike. When the Fusion Energy Act passed, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Republican John Cornyn of Texas, said that “fusion energy is a promising clean and safe power source that could help address America’s growing energy demands.” Another co-sponser, Republican Todd Young of Indiana, said that fusion “has the potential to usher in a new era of energy production in America.”
But whether generalized Republican support for fusion will extend beyond easing regulations to actively include subsidies for the technology remains to be seen. And for now, most of the companies themselves are staying quiet. As of publication time, CFS, Zap Energy, Type One Energy, and Xcimer Energy all either said they could not comment or else did not respond to my request for comment.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from the Fusion Industry Association.
Regardless of who’s eligible for what and when, strict “foreign entity of concern” provisions could make clean energy incentives impossible to take advantage of.
The word of the moment in renewable energy is “unworkable.” That’s how the chief executives of two major renewables developers — John Ketchum of NextEra and Jim Murphy of Invenergy — described new requirements inserted into clean energy tax credits by congressional Republicans in recent weeks.
“The way they’re drafted, they’re unworkable,” Ketchum said of the requirements at a Politico summit held earlier this week. He was referring specifically to a new set of provisions in the House budget reconciliation bill which say that to qualify for the credits, companies must divest their supply chains from “foreign entities of concern,” a group of countries comprising Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. But really, the rules are about China.
Around 80% of the global solar panel supply chain runs through China, according to the International Energy Agency. The batteries used in many stationary storage systems are almost entirely made in China, to name just a couple isolated examples. Starting in 2026, the bill mandates that developers seeking to claim the clean energy production or investment tax credits may not receive “material assistance” from China. That refers to any component or subcomponent (including critical minerals) that was “extracted, processed, recycled, manufactured, or assembled” by a “prohibited foreign entity,” defined as a company with at least 25% Chinese ownership or 10% Chinese debt holdings, according to a memo by the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright. The rules become even more strict in 2028. Similar strictures were also added to the 45X advanced manufacturing tax credit.
A small modular reactor has at least 10,000 component parts, Ketchum told the Politico audience. “We come to find out that one of the screws in the bolts, used by one of the suppliers five layers down … was actually sourcing the bolt and the screw from China. Guess what happens? You’re disqualified, all your tax credits for that small modular reactor go away,” Ketchum said.
“How in the world are you going to trace five layers down to a subcontractor who’s buying a bolt and a screw?”
Murphy, the Invenergy CEO, put it more succinctly at an industry conference last week. “The supply chain can not support that, and won’t be able to support that for several years. It’s just an unworkable provision.”
While these may sound like the exaggerations of executives eager to avoid paperwork or costly new investments, analysts who have looked at the bill’s language have similarly concluded that the language is both so vague and so broad that determining whether a company has complied would be almost impossible.
Analysts at the investment bank Evercore wrote in a note to clients last week that while the new FEOC framework “ostensibly aims to keep China out of U.S. energy supply chains, it would likely bury companies and their suppliers in such onerous paperwork and diligence that the remaining tax credits are rendered largely unusable.”
Foreign entity of concern rules are not new — versions of them appear in the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act’s electric vehicle tax credits. The FEOC rules in the One Big, Beautiful Bill are far more extensive, however.
The Senate may look to loosen the rules, according to Axios, andseveral House Republicans have signed (yet another) letter, this one referring to the restrictions as “highly restrictive and onerous” and “overly prescriptive and risk undermining U.S. competitiveness.”
Should the FEOC provisions become law, their exact implementation will be up to the IRS. In the case of EVs, the tax agency came out with proposed guidelines in the months after the Inflation Reduction Act was enacted, but didn’t finalize them until 2024. Even complying with those required a “Herculean” effort from the EV and battery industry, Albert Gore, head of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, told me.
Gore also questioned whether the rules would be “workable” as written. To determine whether compliance would be worth it, Gore said, you have to evaluate how close an industry is to complying in the present, and the value of complying in the future, and the cost to get there.
Given that the clean energy and manufacturing credits sunset after 2031 (except for wind components, which sunset earlier), that calculation may very well come out negative. And then there’s the deadline to even qualify for the clean energy tax credits in the first place, starting construction two months after the bill passes, according to the House language.
The EV rules did ultimately support U.S. manufacturing, Gore told me. “It was a pretty efficient investment in American manufacturing, kind of disguised as a consumer EV credit,” he said. “But it was a very, very stringent credit.”
Xan Fishman, senior managing director of the energy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, was skeptical that the FEOC provisions in the budget reconciliation bill would do anything to bolster U.S. manufacturing. “Intricate and complicated doesn’t make it more effective,” he told me.
“You would have a disallowance of credit if you are a foreign entity of concern, or you are a foreign influenced entity of concern, which might mean that one of your suppliers is a foreign entity of concern, or one of your supplier’s board members is from China or they have a family member that’s from China that runs a foreign entity of concern, or that family member has some business transaction involving debt with a foreign entity of concern, and their suppliers actually might have board members who have family members who have some debt arrangement with the foreign entity of concern,” Fishman elaborated.
This is where workability really comes in.
“If the result of this is we have less U.S. manufacturing, we won’t have achieved the goal” of raising America’s global competitiveness. “Nor will we have been tough on China,” Fishman said.
The ironies of the legislation abound. “There's sort of that double whammy in there with the start of construction deadline, which to some extent, makes the FEOC moot,” Murphy, the Invenergy CEO, said at the conference. “If you don't start construction by the deadline, who cares about it?”
Ironically, if the Senate put in a more relaxed deadline to qualify for the credits, “then we have to really address those foreign entity of concern provisions,” Murphy added.