Brake Track: Why the Chinese are protesting against Tesla

Chinese woman staged a protest against Tesla due to faulty brakes

At the Auto Shanghai Auto Show in Shanghai, a woman wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Tesla's brakes always fail" climbed onto the roof of one of Elon Musk's electric cars and shouted that the automaker should leave the Chinese market. Chinese consumers have been complaining about Tesla cars for a long time. Why the Chinese cannot find a common language with the American company - Gazeta.Ru figured out.

A Chinese woman, dissatisfied with the quality of electric cars from Elon Musk, made a brawl at the Tesla booth during the Auto Shanghai 2021 auto show, The Verge reports.

A woman named Zhang, wearing a T-shirt that said "Tesla always has brakes," climbed onto the roof of a Tesla Model 3 electric car and screamed that all of the company's cars had faulty brakes. The public order violator also shouted calls to remove the American automaker from the Chinese market.

Zhang was detained by the police and arrested for five days. As the media found out, a citizen of China had previously protested because of the inoperative brakes on Tesla electric cars after she had an accident due to a malfunction.

Tesla's China division initially said that Zhang crashed her car due to speeding and that the car had nothing to do with the malfunction. The company also admitted that it still has not been able to win the love of Chinese consumers and satisfy their needs.

This reaction from the American company only exacerbated the situation: one state news outlet called for an investigation into the case of faulty brakes in electric cars, another accused Tesla of insincerity and questioned the company's honesty.

Tesla then issued an apology for not paying attention to Zhang's claims earlier and taking no action to fix the problem.

Chinese customers have been complaining about Tesla vehicles for a long time. As noted by The Next Web, in March another Chinese citizen from Henan province staged a one-man picket in front of a local Tesla store, writing on her car, "Tesla always has brakes." Also, the Chinese woman shouted that the electric car, due to a defect in the brakes, almost killed her entire family. In total, there are five such cases in China.

In addition to brake problems, Chinese users have also reported battery fires, unexpected vehicle acceleration, and software crashes while driving.

Due to the large number of complaints from consumers about the quality of electric cars, in January 2020, a government meeting on the topic of safety was held in China, as a result of which Tesla was asked to conduct its activities within the framework of Chinese law.

Tesla responded by saying it would conduct an inspection of its Chinese unit, but no news of the progress of the inspection has emerged.

Freedom Finance analyst Yevgeny Mironyuk noted that it is impossible to say that the Chinese do not like Tesla. So, despite the large number of complaints about American electric cars, in the first quarter of 2021 Tesla sold about 69 thousand electric vehicles in China, which is 37% of its sales worldwide

.China is actively ramping up production of electric vehicles, and Tesla has several competitors in the local market. Tesla's Chinese competitors produce much cheaper counterparts ... Tesla is currently winning the competitive race for the Chinese market, but the number of modifications of electric vehicles with different types of batteries and the rapid development of "autopilots" leaves Tesla only a niche in the Chinese market, "the expert concluded.