A woman makes a scene at the Tesla exhibit at the Shanghai International Auto Show on April 19, 2021, accusing Tesla of brake failure. (Video screenshot)
A woman surnamed Zhang made a scene at the Tesla booth at the Shanghai International Auto Show on Monday (19). After the incident, Tesla China executives told the media that the woman was afraid that “someone was behind” the unreasonable disturbance. On Tuesday, the Chinese Communist Party’s official media published an article criticizing Tesla’s “arrogance” and calling for tighter regulation of car companies that “bully customers in a big store. Netizens generally questioned the background of the incident, which is not simple.
On the morning of April 19 local time, a woman wearing a T-shirt with “brake failure” on it appeared at the Tesla booth at the Shanghai International Auto Show. She climbed on the roof of a car and shouted “Tesla brakes are not working”, causing a crowd to gather. Tesla management immediately called the police, and several staff members went up to dissuade the woman from her antics, but to no avail. Finally, the woman was forced by the police to pull off the roof of the car and subdue to take away.
Afterwards, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Qingpu Branch of the case reported that the woman surnamed Zhang stomped on the vehicle at the auto show site, causing some damage to the vehicle. At present, Zhang was sentenced to 5 days of administrative detention by the public security authorities for disturbing public order.
“Tesla China” vice president Tao Lin said in an interview with the land media Financial Auto, the woman accused Tesla brake failure caused the accident, but refused to hand the vehicle involved to the national third-party institutions for testing, “we have no way to compromise”. Tao Lin also questioned Zhang: “I think she is also very professional, there should be (people) behind.”
Later that afternoon, Tesla’s official microblogging site issued another statement, confirming that the woman was a car owner in Henan province, whose father alleged that the brakes did not work and insisted on the return of the car after an accident in which he was driving over the speed limit. The statement said that Tesla has maintained negotiations with the owner for nearly two months and is willing to assist in completing testing, repairs or insurance claims for the vehicle, but the owner refused any offer from Tesla and refused to allow the vehicle in question to undergo any kind of third-party testing. The statement emphasized that the company would not compromise on unreasonable claims.
The following day (20), Xinhua Daily Telegraph, a newspaper owned by Xinhua News Agency, published an opinion piece criticizing Tesla executives for responding “so arrogantly” to Zhang’s female drama and lacking “sincerity” to solve the problem.
According to the commentary, although extreme rights defense is not worth encouraging, but if car companies can not provide quality products and good after-sales service, can not guarantee the safety of consumers driving, and even malicious speculation about the motives of the rights defenders, may smash their own signboard. The commentary also said that China is one of the world’s largest automobile production and sales markets, “no matter which car companies, they must have respect for the Chinese market, and sincerely accept the supervision of consumers”.
The commentary concludes by emphasizing that if car companies are suspected of “bullying customers”, the authorities should also strengthen their supervision.
According to the Chinese media, Zhang, the heroine of the dispute, bought a Tesla electric car. In February, her father drove the electric car into two cars in a row and finally hit a concrete fence on the side of the road before stopping, injuring the occupants. After the incident, Zhang accused the vehicle of brake failure, and Tesla responded that the background data showed that the vehicle involved in the accident was in a state of 118.5 kilometers per hour, and no abnormal brake braking was seen. However, Zhang refused to acknowledge Tesla’s claims and disagreed with any solution proposed by the company, insisting on the return of the car and protesting in public several times for this reason. Tesla, on the other hand, suspected that there was something else behind the woman’s “disturbance” and questioned the “someone” behind the woman.
The “disturbance” also sparked widespread concern in overseas online communities, with a large number of netizens suspecting political factors behind the incident.
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The Chinese American freelance media personality Huang Ziyin pointed out in an interview: “This is a game done by the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party’s goal is to get the core of Tesla’s technology and then drive it out of the domestic market, it deliberately made such a woman to give Tesla trouble, this is a porcelain. If there was no Chinese Communist Party behind this matter, this woman would have been dragged out long ago.”
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