This week, Tesla made an abrupt change to the interface of its in-car entertainment system, seemingly removing Disney+ from the rotation of apps that users can access. Teslarati initially reported that the car company “appears to have removed Disney+ from its vehicles”. The site later updated its report, writing that Tesla says the Disney+ icon has only been removed from the car’s theatre screen for “owners who haven’t accessed it”.
While it’s a little unclear what that actually means or why it happened, onlookers largely interpreted the whole thing as a shot at Disney CEO Bob Iger. You see, Elon Musk has been feuding with Iger ever since Disney decided to pull its advertising from Musk’s platform, X, a few weeks ago. The company pulled its ads not long after Musk made a comment that was widely condemned as anti-Semitic. Later, at an event hosted by the New York Times, Musk told advertisers who had pulled their support from the platform to “go fuck themselves”, calling out Iger in particular. Musk later doubled down, saying on X that he thought Iger should be “fired immediately”.
As a result of this ongoing drama, the first thing people thought when Tesla appeared to nuke Disney+ in its entertainment systems was that Musk was taking another swipe at Iger. Such a blatant display of bad corporate decision-making would be interesting enough on its own, but things got really interesting when @TheTeslaHoe got involved.
Not familiar with The Tesla Hoe? Neither was I until I wrote this article. To clarify, an X user with the aforementioned handle decided to call out Musk on Monday over the changes to the car’s entertainment system, claiming in a widely shared post that the changes had inconvenienced her as a mother.
“So Disney+ has now been removed from Tesla vehicles. I’m assuming this is in retaliation for Disney pulling advertising from the X (which they have every right to do),” Tesla Hoe said. “So now I, as a mum, have to deal with telling my toddlers we can’t watch Disney+ in our Tesla and dealing with their upset feelings because 2 grown men can’t have a civil discussion and move on.”
The criticism continued: “This has WAY more impact on Tesla owners than it does on Disney. Disney is bloody loaded and they definitely don’t need their app in every Tesla vehicle. Plus, I’m sure Bon Iger [sic] isn’t up crying in the night about this.”
Tesla Hoe added: “This seems like a temper tantrum. And I feel like Tesla owners are now caught in the crossfire of something that is absolutely not their fault. ***I don’t think Bob should have ever pulled the ad. It was stupid. But this is also way out of line and leaves a bad taste in my mouth”.
To clarify, “Hoe” here is actually an acronym (H.O.E.) for “Honest Owner’s Experience”. The woman who runs the account also posts videos on YouTube and TikTok, sharing her perspective on the vehicles, including reviews of software updates to the car’s Full Self-Driving system and other new features. Following her posts about the Disney+ drama, Tesla Hoe briefly became a popular topic on X, with some users commenting that Musk had “lost” the influencer. Others criticised her for criticising Musk.
A few hours after her initial posts, Tesla Hoe posted about the issue again, seemingly reversing course on the whole thing. “removing disney+ from teslas was clearly elon’s way of telling us our kids need to go touch grass and we actually need to be parents for a few seconds,” she wrote optimistically.
Whether Tesla’s sudden vaporisation of the Disney+ app is the result of Musk’s petty squabble with a corporate rival, or simply his efforts to force random children to “touch grass”, is unknown. However, it speaks volumes about the reputation the billionaire has built over the past few years that these are the two most favourable hypotheses for an otherwise inexplicable product update.
