Things got pretty ugly for Tesla early last year, when the backlash to Elon Musk's involvement in the Trump administration hit fever pitch. I remember biking by a big Tesla service center near me in the San Francisco Bay Area and seeing several Teslas that had been smashed and spray painted. Tesla sales dropped around that time across the globe, and in the EV stronghold of California, too. Then the EV tax credit got axed, dealing another blow to EVs broadly and to America's market leader specifically.

 

Now Tesla seems to be bouncing back. In the second quarter, Californians registered 45,953 new Teslas, according to a report from the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) that cites Experian data. That's an 11.8% increase from Q2 of last year.