Netflix’s new apocalyptic thriller Leave the World Behind has a crucial scene involving Teslas on a highway, and the film’s depiction of Tesla cars sparked a baffling response from Elon Musk that completely missed the point. Based on the novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind revolves around a coordinated cyberattack on the United States that sends the American people spiraling into dystopian chaos. Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts star as a couple who are enjoying a relaxing vacation at a luxurious cabin on Long Island with their two teenage children when the cyberattack hits and the country descends into anarchy.
The couple’s first thought is to leave their rented cabin and head to New Jersey to stay with relatives. But they find that urban areas are a much more dangerous place to be than the woods, and even if it was safe to go to New Jersey, the highway is jammed up with Teslas, so they can’t get through. The scene with the Tesla cars is one of the strangest sequences in the movie. Along with the oil tanker that drives up onto the beach and the planes that crash into the ocean, the Tesla incident is never fully explained. But it’s possible to put two and two together.
The Teslas’ Auto-Driving Tech Was Hacked To Make Them All Crash & Block The Highway
When the family gets to the highway, they find a bunch of self-driving Tesla cars smashing into each other and blocking their access to the road. Along with the oil tanker that runs ashore and the internet and TV networks going down, the Tesla incident is a part of the cyberattack. Whoever is behind this attack on America hacked into the Teslas’ auto-driving feature to send all the cars to that location, where they all pile up and block the highway. It proved to be an effective technique, because it prevented the family from going to New Jersey and sent them back to their vacation home on Long Island.
Leave the World Behind never gives a definitive answer about who organized this attack on the United States. The ambiguity is a big part of the point; America has a lot of enemies and, ultimately, it doesn’t matter who’s responsible for the attack in the face of the consequences of that attack. There’s a vague suggestion that it could be Iran, because a drone drops leaflets written in Arabic, but a different drone drops similar leaflets written in Korean, so it could be North Korea. It could be a joint effort between Iran and North Korea, or it could be a different nation entirely – or maybe it’s a domestic attack.
The Teslas Blocking The Highway Ensured That Communities Were Kept Isolated (Part Of The Attack’s Transporation Plan)
In the final act of Leave the World Behind, Mahershala Ali’s G.H. character theorizes that the attack is part of a three-step plan to destabilize America with a political coup d’état. The first step is the cyberattacks, isolating people with power and satellite outages around the country. The second step is creating “synchronised chaos” by spreading misinformation with campaigns like the drones’ leaflet drops spotted by Hawke’s Clay character. The third and final step is civil war, turning the American people against each other in a violent uproar. The Tesla hack is part of the first step: isolating people and cutting off their communication.
During his explanation of the three-step plan, G.H. says that the attackers are trying to limit transportation and the spread of communication, which is why they’re going after vehicles. The hackers hacked into the navigation system of the oil tanker to prevent people from traveling to another country by sea. They downed the planes to prevent air travel. They hacked into the Teslas and used them to block the way out of town to prevent automotive transportation. The Tesla pile-up seen on the highway between Long Island and New Jersey was likely happening on major roads across the United States.
Elon Musk’s Leave The World Behind Response Ignores The Meaning Of The Tesla Scene
Tesla founder Elon Musk has taken to social media to criticize the Leave the World Behind scene featuring his cars, but his critique seems to miss the point of the scene. Musk tried to brag about the solar power charging of Teslas, saying that “even if the world goes fully Mad Max” (via Variety) with no more gasoline, Teslas will still be in use, because they can be charged from solar panels. But the scene has nothing to do with whether or not a Tesla can run without gasoline. The point of the crash scene was that their tech can be hacked into, and Musk had no defense against that.
