BEIJING, January 26 (TMTPOST) — Multinational electric vehicle maker Tesla will sue Chinese influencer Chen Zhengang for defamation, Securities Times reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Tesla has confirmed the news report, stating that the company has already filed a lawsuit in court.
Tesla said on Wednesday that it has officially initiated a lawsuit against Chen, who has millions of followers on social media. According to Tesla, Chen fabricated data in the testing of a Tesla car in his video.
Chen uploaded the two controversial videos in April 2021, in which he tested two electric cars’ emergency braking systems.
In his videos, Chen personally drove and tested a Tesla Model 3 and Xpeng P7 on a closed road. He drove the cars towards a mannequin and a fake car made of paper at the speed of 50km/h to test the vehicles’ automatic emergency braking system. Tesla Model 3 did not brake automatically and hit the obstacles in Chen’s test. In comparison, Xpeng P7 successfully braked. The two videos have attracted more than 600,000 likes.
Chen’s videos sparked heated discussions online. Some comments pointed out that Chen stepped on the pedal when testing the intervention of the automatic emergency braking system on Model 3.
Some viewers pointed out that Chen was still stepping on the pedal when driving towards the obstacles as the “energy bar” was still shown on the vehicle’s control panel, which indicates the vehicle was accelerating. It was suggested that Chen had stepped on the pedal several times when testing the automatic emergency braking system.
Another influencer named Xiaoli Feiche in the automobile field also challenged the truthfulness of Chen’s test in several of his videos.
This is not the first time for Tesla to bring controversy about its products to the court in China. According to corporate record platform Tianyancha, Tesla’s unit in Shanghai is involved in three defamation cases while its Beijing unit is involved in six cases.
Tesla has stated in public that China is the most important market for the company a few times. In 2021, the company delivered around 936,000 vehicles globally, with the Chinese market contributing 51.7% of the sales.
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