The author | Qin Zhangyong
Edit the | Wang Yan
Following the lawsuit against female owners of roof rights protection, Tesla's legal department has been launched again.
Recently, Tesla said that it has officially sued self-media person Chen Zhengang (Douyin account name "Xiaogang Xuechang"), suing him for infringement of the right to reputation. On the Douyin platform, "Xiao gang xuechang" is certified as a "senior automotive creator", and as of January 29, 574 works have been released, and the number of people who pay attention to them has exceeded 14.7 million.
The beginning of the controversy began with two videos released by XiaoGang on April 29 and 30, 2021, which mainly focused on emergency braking tests on the Tesla Model 3 and Xiaopeng P7. Judging from the test results in the video, the Xiaopeng P7 won the Tesla Model 3 in an all-round way. At present, the cumulative number of likes of these two videos exceeds 600,000, the number of comments exceeds 45,000, and the number of retweets exceeds 20,000.
According to media reports, Tesla believes that Xiaogang senior falsified the data in the test experiment, forged Tesla's brake failure, and thus used the network to carry out defamation, violating Tesla's right to reputation.
As a party, on January 27, Senior Xiao Gang responded on the social platform that "I know", and later posted a video saying that he would actively respond to the lawsuit and face it calmly. At present, the relevant test video is still there, but it said that it will be deleted on the day of the New Year, "and does not want to be used by people with hearts and affect the owner of the car." ”
As of now, neither side has disclosed more details about the prosecution.
1. Can't really brake or fake test?
In the past year, Tesla has been pushed to the forefront of public opinion many times because of the "brake failure" problem, and then the relevant discussions and tests on its braking ability have emerged in an endless stream, why after nearly a year, Tesla's legal department has targeted this video?
Judging from the video content, Xiao Gang used the Model 3 and Xiaopeng P7 as a comparison model to test the braking function of its automatic emergency braking system (AEB) respectively. The test method is to release the accelerator pedal at a speed of 50km/h, do not step on the brakes, and drive straight to the model standing plate and inflatable dummy prepared in advance to test the braking state of the vehicle.
Source: TikTok screenshot
After the test, Xiao Gang concluded that when Tesla faced the emergency braking of the model standing plate, only 1 of the 3 times was successful, and the other 2 times did not have any brake reaction. During the dummy test, the vehicle had brakes but did not brake, and crashed directly into the dummy.
In contrast, in two tests, the Xiaopeng P7 achieved brake braking in the face of a distance of 90 cm from the model's standing plate, and the braking distance in the face of the inflatable dummy was 30 cm. At the end of the video, Xiao Gang also received a call from the Xiaopeng Service Center, who said that he received a user collision warning message from the headquarters, so he followed up on the situation.
"I didn't want to step on anyone or hold anyone, both of them were my own cars." In order to emphasize the objectivity of the test, Senior Xiao Gang stressed in the video that he just did a simple test and recorded it.
At that time, Tesla was in the public opinion controversy of "unstoppable" like a mountain and tsunami, and the test results given by Xiao Gang seemed to confirm the doubt. As soon as the video was released, it sparked a lot of discussion.
For this result, many netizens ridiculed Xiao Gang for charging "advertising fees". Some people also believe that its test method is not compliant, and there is a suspicion of deliberately smearing Tesla. However, some netizens agreed and chose to support him.
Not only did the two sides disagree, but several Tesla owners also questioned the details in the video. On the screen of the Tesla Model 3, the electric door and kinetic energy recovery status are displayed. When the Model 3 in the test video hits an obstacle, the energy bar is still displayed on the machine screen, which means that the vehicle still has power output at this time. And this detail also points to the suspected "throttle" of Xiao Gang before the collision of the vehicle.
In the face of doubts, Xiao Gang responded later that the reason for doing this was to meet the test standard of 50 kilometers per hour at that time, before the oil was collected too early, the kinetic energy recovery reduced the speed, "for the sake of rigor will be the speed to raise." ”
In addition, he said that tapping the throttle did not affect the automatic emergency braking intervention, and said that it was precisely because of some mistakes in the first test that the second test was carried out. For this reply, many netizens did not buy it. Some car owners said that this result did not match their actual experience.
A domestic Tesla Model 3 owner told Future Auto Daily that he had encountered several unexpected situations while driving, "The car was braked and directly stopped." He recalled the most thrilling time when he was driving at a speed of 60 kilometers per hour, and the Porsche in front of him suddenly braked, just when he thought he was going to crash, "the brake stopped instantly, and the car sound was particularly harsh." ”
"If the reason for not braking the car is caused by the improper operation of the big V (Xiao Gang Senior), and the video released on its Douyin platform does not match the facts, it may constitute an infringement of Tesla's right to reputation." In the view of lawyer Zhu Jieping, a specially invited researcher of the China Policy Science Research Association, if the court finds that the behavior of Xiao Gang has caused harm to Tesla, the act of deleting the video can only be aimed at the effect of stopping the infringement after deletion, and the damage before deletion still needs to be liable.
2, Tesla legal department is very busy
At present, the incident is still fermenting. Although the truth of the facts and the right and wrong remains to be excavated and the legal ruling, for Tesla, perhaps the moment it takes up the legal weapon, it has achieved its purpose.
"Tesla's lawsuit is a public relations act, it is for the public to see." In the view of Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology, for some new functions of smart cars, the current laws and regulations are not perfect, and it is difficult to restore the scene when forensic evidence is taken, which also means that it is difficult to sort out the responsibility when making the final judgment.
In fact, compared with the attitude of other car companies in the face of negative public opinion, "hard and rigid" seems to have become a unique label for Tesla.
In May 2021, when Tesla's "brake failure" incident was not yet conclusive, Tesla's global vice president Tao Lin made a statement that "consumer education needs to be strengthened" and then set off a storm of public opinion. After triggering a strong backlash from public opinion, since June 1, Tesla has opened "Tesla Legal Department" accounts on multiple social platforms.
Interestingly, many netizens found that in the watch list of one of its platforms, many of them had previously released Tesla's negative media and personal accounts. This is also seen by the outside world as the beginning of Tesla's official entry into "reverse rights protection".
After Tesla, it began the model of "punching disobedient" car owners and "kicking" self-media bloggers.
In September 2021, Tesla was on the hot search with the topic of "admitting compensation of 1.5 million yuan and suing the owner for 5 million yuan". The reason is that the owner of the car, Han Chao, purchased a Model S used car officially certified by Tesla, but various safety problems occurred in the car during the driving process. The owner of the car believes that this is an accident car, sued Tesla for "one refund and three losses", and finally the court ordered Tesla to refund the owner Han Chao 1.51 million.
Source: pixabay
Although the court rejected Tesla's appeal and chose to support the owner Han Chao, the former did not stop. Tesla believes that Han Chao has long made relevant remarks about the second plaintiff (Tesla Shanghai Co., Ltd.) in a low-level and derogatory manner, in order to claim 5.05 million yuan from him.
At the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2021, a female owner from Anyang, Henan Province, rushed to the roof of tesla to defend her rights, accusing Tesla of brake failure, which also triggered a discussion about tesla's brake reliability. In the top ten consumer rights protection public opinion hotspots in 2021 released by the China Consumers Association not long ago, the "Tesla roof rights protection incident" ranked first.
A month later, Tesla customer service supported the official Weibo to publish a number of self-media apology letters, these self-media said that they apologized for Tesla's inappropriate videos or remarks, and some self-media will also apologize for the top of the homepage for 30 days.
In June 2021, Tesla sued a Wenzhou car owner, Chen Mou, on the grounds of maliciously slandering Tesla and the "Tesla" brand vehicles produced by Tesla, and demanded a claim for 500,000 yuan in tort damages. Subsequently, the court's first-instance judgment required the owner to apologize to Tesla and compensate 50,000 yuan for 90 days on the douyin platform's use account.
Two months later, the owner of the lady who defended her rights on the roof also received a pre-litigation mediation opinion consultation letter from the Shanghai Qingpu District People's Court, and Tesla demanded that she apologize and compensate for the loss of the right to reputation of 5 million yuan.
Looking at the past year, for Tesla, which is plagued by negativity, these may be just the tip of the iceberg in the work of its legal department. And this tough style of settling public opinion disputes is also largely related to the management style of its CEO Elon Musk.
Musk has said that other companies spend money on advertising and manipulating public opinion, while Tesla will focus more on products. A Tesla insider told Future Auto Daily that even in China, Tesla's public relations team does not have a budget. However, in the eyes of some netizens, Tesla, which seems to use legal means to protect its rights, is actually to warn of negative voices.
Behind the tough attitude is its brilliant sales performance as a support. On January 27, Tesla announced its 2021 full-year financial report, and the data showed that in 2021, Tesla delivered 936,000 new cars in the whole year, an increase of 87% year-on-year. The Shanghai Gigafactory achieved annual deliveries of 484,100 units in the whole year, accounting for 51.7% of the total deliveries. For the 2022 delivery performance, Musk said that it will "easily" achieve 50% growth.