Zhang Yazhou was sitting in the passenger seat of her Tesla Model 3 when she said she heard her father’s panicked voice: The brakes don’t work! Approaching a red light, her father swerved around two cars before plowing into an SUV and a sedan and crashing into a large concrete barrier.
Stunned, Zhang gazed at the deflating airbag in front of her. She could never have imagined what was to come: Tesla sued her for defamation for complaining publicly about the car’s brakes — and won. A Chinese court ordered Zhang to pay more than $23,000 in damages and publicly apologize to the $1.1 trillion company.
Zhang is not the only one to find herself in the crosshairs of Tesla, which is led by Elon Musk, among the richest men in the world and a self-described “ free speech absolutist.” Over the last four years, Tesla has sued at least six car owners in China who had sudden vehicle malfunctions, quality complaints or accidents they claimed were caused by mechanical failures.
All those things are perfectly reasonable if there actually was a brake failure. That car almost killed her family. If Tesla doesn’t want to be called out don’t put dangerous vehicles on the road.
Of the many issues Tesla has, this is not one of them. They have the telemetry for proof: I blame them for not being more forthcoming with it, and hopefully that would be mandatory in any trial.
However you’re applying Western standards, and many other in this thread talk about “saving face” and that liable is not contingent on the truth in China. She knew what the law is and decided to ignore it hoping that a Western style pr protest would work. Apparently she was wrong, and the result is consistent with what she should have expected.
If they provided the data and it was reviewed by a neutral third party that found them not to be at fault fair enough but aren’t those cars supposed to have self driving features that would prevent something like this?