How ethical is Tesla?
Our research highlights how Tesla has been fined for several air quality violations, has been criticised for alleged child labour involvement in its supply chain, its presence in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, very high director’s pay, and poor tax conduct.
Our research also looks at the major issues with Tesla and its owner Elon Musk; from his role in shutting down U.S. federal bodies working on climate change, to his support for the German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the UK’s far-right leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Tesla’s overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
Pollution and use of toxic chemicals
Tesla received a best rating under Ethical Consumer’s Carbon Management and Reporting category because it’s focused on producing climate-friendly products.
However, it received a worst rating for its Environmental Reporting, because its environmental reports didn’t discuss key issues such as toxic chemicals. Ethical Consumer expects all electronics companies to discuss the use of potentially hazardous chemicals like Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs), PVC and phthalates, but Tesla hasn’t published policies about any of these. It similarly lacked adequate toxic chemical policies for the solar panels it produces – it has published no policy on this issue, even though the industrial manufacture of solar panels involves the use, release and treatment of numerous polluting and toxic substances.
Perhaps surprisingly for an electric car company, Tesla faces a lot of fines for pollution.
It paid a penalty of $1m in 2021 due to air quality violations at one of its assembly plants. In total 33 notices of violation were issued to Tesla by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which included issues such as exceeding the amount of emissions it was permitted to produce, and failing to conduct required emissions testing.
Tesla was also fined in 2018 “for using malfunctioning burners at its assembly plant in Fremont that spewed dangerous levels of nitrogen oxides into the air” at one of its electric car factories. It forked out a sum of nearly $140,000 at that time.
Workers' rights
Tesla scored our best rating for Conflict Minerals Policy and Practice and was a member of the Responsible Mineral Initiative. However, according to a 2019 Guardian article Tesla was also listed as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a human rights firm on behalf of 14 parents and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The article said that the anti-slavery economist Siddharth Kara accused Tesla, along with other companies like Apple and Google, of aiding and abetting in the death and injury of children who were working in cobalt mines in their supply chain.
In January 2022 it was criticised by US lawmakers for expanding into the Uyghur Region, despite evidence that the Chinese government is running mass internment camps there.
Tesla was one of the worst-scoring companies in the 2020 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) report, which examines the human rights and environmental performance of 229 of the world’s largest companies. Tesla scored in the 0-10% band on the benchmark.
Tesla scored poorly across the remainder of our ratings that related to human and workers’ rights, receiving for example a worst rating for Supply Chain Management.
Links to Donald Trump
Tesla is owned by Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and a major supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Between January 2025 until May 2025, Musk led the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration – a body supposedly designed to cut government spending. It was set up by an executive order of Donald Trump, after suggestions from Musk in summer 2024.
Musk’s work with DOGE received criticism globally; experts say it triggered a “constitutional crisis” in the U.S. Musk himself is unelected.
While the White House has denied that Musk runs DOGE, Trump called him the head of the department, and a federal judge ruled in March that he was acting as its de facto “leader”. Musk has denied that DOGE represents a “hostile takeover” of the U.S. government.
Under Musk, DOGE’s actions included accessing private taxpayer data, cutting environmental initiatives and attacking programmes that include DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) principles. Its work has ensured mass layoffs of federal workers, including in organisations monitoring extreme weather conditions and the country’s department for providing overseas aid (USAID).
The decisions are facing major pushback from courts and citizens alike. For example, In March, a judge ruled that Musk and DOGE’s decision to dismantle USAID likely exercised unconstitutional authority “in multiple ways”, during a lawsuit brought by former employees of the department.
Groups in the U.S. launched multiple voluntary initiatives to save vital government data in the face of efforts from Trump and Musk to eradicate federally-funded research on climate change, environmental justice and other topics.
In protests against Musk’s actions, multiple Tesla owners even rebranded their cars with badges from other companies, or covered the Tesla logo.
Musk stepped down from his role in DOGE in May 2025, due to rules limiting his involvement to 180 days.
Musk backs far-right German party
Elon Musk has also been a vocal supporter of the far-right AfD, which won over 20 percent of the vote during the country’s recent general elections.
During a livestream on X with the party’s co-leader Alice Weidel in January, Musk declared: “Only AfD can save Germany, end of story.” He added: “I'm really strongly recommending that people vote for AfD.”
Appearing via video at an AfD rally the same month, he urged German voters to move beyond "past guilt". The statement came a week after he was criticised for appearing to use a Nazi salute during Trump’s inauguration.
Members of the AfD party have repeatedly trivialised the Holocaust, with AfD co-chairman Alexander Gauland calling it "just a speck of bird's muck in more than 1,000 years of successful German history". Some have also used Nazi rhetoric, such as "Lügenpresse", which means “lying press”.
Links to Tommy Robinson
Musk has also backed the UK far-right leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Yaxley-Lennon, who is better known under this pseudonym Tommy Robinson, was in prison until May 2025, after repeatedly making false allegations against a Syrian refugee who was 15-years-old at the time.
Robinson has previously been convicted for fraud, public order and drug offences, as well as contempt of court. He was a member of the fascist British National Party (BNP) between 2004 and 2005, and later co-founded and led the radical-right English Defence League “against the rise of radical Islam”.
In summer 2024, while on holiday at a five-star-hotel in Cyprus, Robinson spread online misinformation falsely suggesting that a Muslim migrant was responsible for the murder of three children in Southport. Multiple commentators accused him of fuelling the Islamophobic riots that spread across the UK in the following weeks.
In January 2025, Musk began calling on authorities to “Free Tommy Robinson” on his social media platform X. Later that month Robinson’s team posted on Telegram that Musk had offered financial support to the far-right leader, stating: “We are grateful to Elon Musk and his team at X for agreeing to provide support to Tommy Robinson for two specific legal cases”. Musk did not confirm the donation, and its size is unknown.
Late last year, the iPaper also reported that Musk was considering donating to the UK’s radical right party Reform.
Enabling hate speech on X
Elon Musk bought the social media platform Twitter in 2022, before renaming it X. His purchase has led to a boom in misinformation and hate speech on the platform.
After buying X, Musk fired over 80% of the platform's employees, including many of the moderators who have previously checked for false or harmful content. He removed the ability of users to report ‘misleading information’, and reinstated over 1,100 previously banned accounts, including Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson, leader of the UK’s far-right. Meanwhile the platform declared the words ‘cis’ and ‘cisgender’ as slurs which result in a user’s removal from the platform.
The changes have had major impacts. Since the takeover, NGOs have reported that use of the n-word tripled, slurs against gay men rose by 58%, slurs against trans people rose by 62%, and anti-Semitic tweets doubled. In 2023, accounts that consistently published popular tweets containing links to misinformation were found to receive 44% more interactions.
Financial arrangements
Tesla’s highest paid executive received $46m according to the company’s 2021 accounts.
According to the accounts Elon Musk received only $23,000 in 2019, but this was more than made up for in 2018 when he received over $2 billion worth of wages and awards.
Tesla received a worst rating for Likely Use of Tax Avoidance Strategies, because it had subsidiaries in the tax havens of Delaware, Nevada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Malta and Switzerland. Several of these subsidiaries were high risk company types for tax avoidance.
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Read about boycotts of Tesla and Twitter.
Read about grassroots boycotts of Tesla and Musk.
Find alternatives to Tesla in our guide to cars and electric cars.
Our research for Tesla was conducted in 2022. The political section above was written in 2025.