Auto Show in Canada Boots Tesla Over Safety Concerns

The Vancouver International Auto Show has banned Tesla from this year’s event over safety concerns in the wake of several attacks against dealerships across the U.S., according to several reports from Canadian news outlets. Tesla dealerships and charging stations have been shot with guns and cars have been set on fire, seemingly a response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his ongoing destruction of the U.S. federal government.

The show runs from March 19-23 and Eric Nicholl, the executive director, said that barring Tesla from the event is all about safety.

“The Vancouver Auto Show’s primary concern is the safety of attendees, exhibitors, and staff,” Nicholl said, according to Canada’s Global News. “This decision will ensure all attendees can be solely focused on enjoying the many positive elements of the event.”

Tesla was reportedly given the opportunity to voluntarily withdraw from the Canadian auto show but declined, according to CNNprompting the organizers to push the car company out. Musk has previously written on X that Canada is “not a real country,” a tweet he later deleted.

The most recent attacks against Tesla locations include “suspicious” Cybertruck fires in Kansas City on Monday and vehicles set on fire at a Tesla repair facility in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The word “resist” was spray-painted on the Tesla building in what was described as a “targeted attack” by Las Vegas police. There have also been peaceful protests organized under the name Tesla Takedown.

The organizers of the Vancouver auto show didn’t mention President Donald Trump’s threats to invade Canada in recent months, but that no doubt was part of the reason Tesla was booted as well. Trump has dramatically upended the world’s geopolitical alliances, threatening traditional allies like Canada with invasion and cozying up to authoritarian regimes like Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Trump has said he wants to make Canada the 51st state, something that many mainstream commentators assumed was a joke shortly after the 2024 election. But it’s become increasingly clear that Trump is not joking, as he also makes threats against Panama as well as Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark.

The attacks against Tesla dealerships have prompted Musk to complain that people are going after him for no reason, a particularly odd claim as cuts to programs like USAID are expected to literally kill millions of people around the world in just the first year, according to estimates from the New York Times.

Musk was instrumental in illegally destroying USAID but the billionaire oligarch appeared on Fox News on Tuesday and claimed people wanted to kill him despite the fact that he’s “never done anything awful.”

“I’ve only done productive things,” Musk claimed on the show with Sean Hannity. “So I think we just have a deranged, there’s some kind of mental illness thing going on here because this doesn’t make any sense.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has called the attacks against Tesla domestic terrorism and says they will be prosecuted as such.

“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” Bondi said in a statement Tuesday. “The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences. We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

Fox News has also kicked into high gear in defending Musk and Tesla from a number of different angles, including by invoking the number of people employed by Tesla. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former candidate for vice president in 2024, caused a lot of anger on the right this week when a video of him talking about Tesla went viral. And Fox says that Walz isn’t taking into account the number of jobs Tesla creates, something that’s apparently supposed to excuse the coup that’s taken place by Musk and his DOGE cronies.

Tesla didn’t respond to an email Wednesday about the auto show. Gizmodo will update this post if we hear back.