On the first Sunday of the northern spring, surrounded by row houses and magnolia trees, I came to a horrifying realisation: My mum was right. I had been flipped off at least 17 times, called a “motherf---er” (in both English and Spanish), and a “f---ing dork”. A woman in a blue sweater stared at me, sighed, and said, “you should be ashamed of yourself”. All of this because I was driving a Tesla Cybertruck.

I had told my mum about my plan to rent this thing and drive it around Washington, DC, for a day – a journalistic experiment to understand what it’s like behind the wheel of America’s most hated car. “Wow. Be careful,” she texted back right away. Both of us had read the stories of Cybertrucks possibly being set on fire, bombed with a Molotov cocktail, and vandalised in every way imaginable. People have targeted the car – and Tesla as a whole – to protest against Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s administration. But out of sheer masochism, or stupidity, I still went ahead and spent a day driving one. As I idled with the windows down on a street in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, a woman glared at me from her front porch: “Fuck you, and this truck, and Elon,” she yelled. “You drive a Nazi truck.” She slammed her front door shut, and then opened it again. “I hope someone blows your shit up.”

Atlantic