Following last month’s fuss at the Shanghai International Auto Show, on May 6, a female Tesla rights activist from Anyang, Henan Province, filed a complaint with the court, suing Tesla and Vice President Tao Lin for infringement of her personal reputation and demanding compensation. The picture shows a Tesla experience store in Wuhan, Hubei province. (Getty Images)
After the Shanghai International Auto Show last month, on May 6, a female Tesla owner in Anyang, Henan Province, filed a lawsuit against Tesla and Vice President Tao Lin, demanding a public apology and compensation of 50,000 yuan (US$7,773) for moral damages. Tesla responded: it will respond to the lawsuit.
The female owner sued Tesla
On the evening of May 6, a statement was released by the female owner of the car saying that she had filed a civil complaint with the North Pass District Court in Anyang City, suing Tesla (Shanghai) Co Ltd, Tesla Motors (Beijing) Co Ltd and Tao Lin, the global vice president of Tesla, on the grounds that Tesla had made public misrepresentations that infringed on her personal reputation.
Zhang claimed that Tesla had repeatedly made statements such as “the owner has a team to help defend his rights and claim high compensation” without any evidence, creating the image of the owner as an “unreasonable and professional car trouble”, and demanded Tesla to publicly apologize and pay 50,000 RMB for moral damages. She demanded that Tesla publicly apologize and pay 50,000 RMB for moral damages.
She claimed that Tesla’s comments caused serious distress to her and her family’s lives, and that “we are subjected to a lot of online attacks and verbal abuse every day.
Later that day, Ms. Zhang’s husband also said in an interview with the mainland media, “This is just the first episode, followed by a lawsuit for brake failure, the whole continuum.”
Mainland lawyer: the owner’s aim is to please the official
Beijing lawyer Mr. Liu said in an interview with the Epoch Times reporter that Zhang’s purpose of suing Tesla is obviously to please the Chinese Communist Party officials, and her current behavior is completely avoiding the truth and stirring up nonsense.
Mr. Liu said that since Zhang wants to defend her rights, she should always focus on the specific cause of the vehicle accident to defend her rights, to find out whether the accident occurred at the time of speeding, the time of braking, whether the driver himself was driving correctly and other issues.
Mr. Liu said, from the legal point of view, the infringement of reputation must be the violator active infringement. But up to now, she has not seen Tesla actively make any other statements on Zhang’s reputation that are not related to the driving accident. The fact that she is now suing Tesla for reputation infringement is “total nonsense”.
In response to Zhang’s claim that she was attacked by netizens, Liu said the netizens were targeting her for inappropriate, excessive and unjustified so-called advocacy, and not for the fact that Tesla released pre-accident driving data that led to her being abused by netizens. He said, “There is no way to establish a causal relationship between Ms. Zhang being trolled and Tesla’s objective and truthful release of technical data, so what is the point of you continuing such a lawsuit?”
Liu also said that Ms. Zhang’s climbing on top of the car at the Shanghai Auto Show and claiming she was pregnant did not stand up to scrutiny in itself, and that “an insider would know at a glance that she was not really defending her rights.”
He said Zhang and her husband’s performance itself also reveals that under the guidance of the official Chinese Communist Party, the mainland public only cares about making money, even if it takes illegal and shameless means. They have become unconcerned with right and wrong, with civil justice, and with proper values and value orientations.
“As long as she thinks that her kind of behavior is what the officials are happy to see and what caters to their needs, she can bravely carry this shamelessness all the way to the end.” Liu said.
Tesla responds to lawsuit
On May 7, Tesla China responded to land media reporters, saying that for the lawsuit filed by Zhang, “I believe the law will definitely give a fair and just verdict.”
Tesla said that they have been focusing on the issue of product quality and making every effort to promote the vehicle for testing matters by third-party authoritative institutions under the designation or supervision of relevant departments. However, up to now, Zhang has not agreed to accept the qualified third-party testing under the designation or supervision of the relevant departments.
At the time of the accident, the driver was Zhang’s father, but his father himself did not come forward to explain the driving situation at the time. Zhang said he was “playing with his phone in the car” at the time of the accident. So far, the allegations of Tesla’s “brake failure” are only Zhang’s verbal descriptions, and there is no valid data recognized by the relevant third parties.
Tesla also said that for the past two months, Tesla has been actively communicating with Zhang, hoping to help him solve the problem. However, despite the best efforts of many parties, Zhang still has not agreed to analyze the EDR (Event Data Recording) data on the vehicle to find out the truth.
Tesla China said, “We will continue to make every effort to promote vehicle testing matters and give an explanation to all the public who are concerned about the incident.”
Mainland people hotly debated
The incident has attracted widespread public attention and hot debate on the mainland network.
Netizen “kindergarten to a small pot of friends” said: “every day consumption of public resources, testing ah, you turned out to be the main brake, testing ah, the data also gave you ah, you analyze ah, come up with evidence hammered Tesla ah, so many days have passed, still do not come up with evidence.”
Netizen “win village MAYA” said: “Someone now still can not see it? The owner is to the whole farce to red to blackmail money, as for the brake quality problems, they do not care and are not willing to disclose.”
Netizen “jianj09” said, “Why not prosecute the quality of the car, how suddenly become a matter of reputation?” Netizen “Sheng Jian -” follow up reply said: “Obviously now for Henan car owners to speak that is not a big deal.”
Netizen “Zheli life” said: “completely shameless.”
Netizen “LeviBuzzard” said: “You have to say that no team is an insult to intelligence.”
Recap of the incident
On April 19, at the Shanghai International Auto Show, Zhang stood on the roof of a car at Tesla’s booth wearing a T-shirt with the words “Brake Failure” and shouted “Brake Failure”. She claimed that her brakes failed while she was driving a Tesla Model 3 in February, causing her to crash into two cars and nearly killing four family members.
Zhang asked Tesla for a hefty settlement. Tesla twice responded “no compromise on unreasonable claims”, and Tesla Vice President Tao Lin said in an interview with the mainland media that she felt Zhang’s behavior was professional and “there should be (someone) behind it”.
The next day, the official media Xinhua News Agency and the media affiliated with the Political and Legal Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued consecutive articles denouncing Tesla, and Tesla was forced to apologize.
On April 22, Tesla released data on Zhang’s driving before the accident, showing that he was driving at high speed before the crash and that Tesla’s automatic braking system had slowed him down considerably.
On April 23, the Chinese Communist Party media Economic Daily issued an article saying, “Before the cause of the accident is identified, the relevant authorities should order Tesla to immediately suspend production and sales for rectification.”
On April 25, CCTV said that Tesla was “out of control”.
On April 28, Tesla released a statement through its official microblogging site, disclosing that on the day of the accident on February 21 this year, the driver was Zhang’s father, and Zhang was playing with her phone in the passenger seat when she felt the car was going faster and caused the crash. on the night of February 21, the traffic police ruled that Zhang was fully responsible for the accident because she failed to maintain a safe distance from the car in front.
The statement also said that in March, Zhang’s husband made it clear that he was surrounded by a “team” from Beijing to assist in “cooperation” with others in the help of people can only listen to, etc.; April 19, Zhang claimed to be three months pregnant, but later confirmed by the police, she was not pregnant. The police later confirmed that she was not pregnant.
The Epoch Times previously reported that the mainland public believes that the government is behind this incident, with the shadow of the Chinese Communist Party; the Chinese Communist Party is using Tesla to drive the domestic smart car brand.
On April 27, Tesla filed a document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showing that Tesla had repaid in full the $614 million loan used to build the Shanghai mega-factory and that the related loan contract had been terminated. After the news broke, the idea that Tesla may be preparing to withdraw from China quickly spread on the mainland network.
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