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The wave of accusations against Tesla in China about "failed brakes" has already subsided as the manufacturer began to fight against people making false accusations. Tesla won another lawsuit against a designated driver who claimed "faulty brakes," and will receive financial damages and a public apology from the culprit.
Tesla faced unprecedented backlash in China last year when some drivers involved in an accident with the company's vehicle—as well as some social media influencers—accused the maker of its vehicles being out of order. In particular, this was about alleged brake failure. The stories of some individuals reached the point of absurdity. For example, an automobile influencer, after taking a Tesla car for a test for the first time in his life, said that the brakes did not work three times.
In response to such activity and the growing wave of lies every day that harmed the manufacturer, Tesla opened a legal department in China, which began the fight against deceivers. At the moment, the company has already filed several lawsuits and continues to be victorious in these cases.
Another Tesla lawsuit against one of the drivers who lied was upheld. A local court ordered a designated driver in Changsha, Hunan province, to pay Tesla 20,000 yuan (about $3,155) in damages for his actions and to apologize within 30 days on his Douyin and WeChat accounts, according to the verdict shared by the Shanghai Consumer Protection Commission on Thursday.
On April 20, 2021, a Tesla driver put up a poster at a shopping mall in Changsha claiming that Tesla brakes had quality issues. "In order to preserve the lives of designated drivers, designated driving services should be denied for Tesla-branded vehicles," the poster reads. The designated driver presented "brake failure" as a fact without any official confirmation or testing by an authority, and displayed the platforms he serves on a billboard, which created the impression to online users that these platforms had determined that Tesla had faulty brakes.
© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.
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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
