The ideal car, which can't stand this bit of fighting, chose to call the police to solve the problem after the MEGA listing was shocked by public opinion, and now the consequences have appeared.
According to a Caixin report on April 23, the Hengshui police in Hebei Province are currently investigating the water company and public relations company involved. The media confirmed the above information from multiple verifications. According to Caixin, during the listing of MEGA, there were three to four car companies suspected of participating in the crackdown, and the Hengshui police launched a number of inquiries, and the media also said that a middle-level employee of Xpeng Motors was "cooperating with the investigation". At the moment, the employee's phone cannot be reached, and the media cannot contact him to respond to the message.
Previously, on March 11, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, had already begun to fight back, saying that the company had been using legal means to deal with organized illegal and criminal acts.
However, judging from the information provided by the above report, it seems to imply that Xpeng Motors is one of the manipulators behind it. However, judging from the current information, there are many doubts about the incident, and the conclusion of who hacked who cannot be easily made.
First of all, some legal sources pointed out that whether the Hebei police are currently "intervening in the investigation" or "filing a case for investigation" is not clearly stated in the above-mentioned report. According to Article 169 of the Ministry of Public Security's "Provisions on the Procedures for Public Security Organs Handling Criminal Cases," public security organs shall immediately accept reports and reports from citizens and ask them about the situation; Article 174 stipulates that the public security organs shall promptly examine the cases they accept or the clues they discover about the crimes. Where case facts or leads are unclear, when necessary, an investigation and verification may be conducted with the approval of the responsible person for the case-handling department.
In addition, Ideal or any third party who reported the case did not produce an official notice from the police. This also seems to prove from the side that the Hebei police may not have officially filed a case against the "MEGA attack by the water army", and are still in the stage of investigating whether it is necessary to file a case for investigation.
Of course, another question is, why is the Hebei police investigating?
At present, it is generally managed territorially or according to the way it is managed in that place at the time of the injury. In Hengshui City, there is only one company related to ideals, Chehejia (Hengshui) Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and the major shareholder behind the company is Beijing Chehejia Energy Service Co., Ltd. However, it is difficult to prove that it was the victim of the "MEGA attack by the water army". I don't know why Ideal went so far to Hebei to call the police?
Of course, it needs to be explained that even if an employee of Xpeng goes to assist in the investigation, it does not mean that the employee is related to the hacking of MEGA, and is the mastermind behind the scenes. In fact, in response to the investigation of Xpeng employees, Xpeng Motors has also responded to this. Xiaopeng even restored the whole thing:
The Hebei police have recently launched an operation to crack down on cyber trolls, and Xpeng Motors is also actively cooperating with the police's investigation of suppliers. The case is in the investigation stage, so please do not believe or spread rumors, and do not affect the investigation and handling of the case by the public security organs.
In addition, in response to the fact that Xpeng employees organized an online troll to attack MEGA, Xpeng said that it very much supports the police's action to crack down on the cyber trolls. Xpeng stressed that the company's MPV model X9 has also been widely attacked by online water armies since its launch, with more than 5,000 related negative reports. In response to such a troll attack, Xpeng Motors has collected evidence and reported the case to the public security organs, which have now accepted it, and if there is updated information, it said that it will also disclose it to the public in a timely manner.
At the same time, Xiaopeng also posted a receipt of the public security case. The receipt shows that the case of damage to the business reputation of Zhaoqing Xiaopeng New Energy Investment Co., Ltd. reported by Xiaopeng Motors on April 13, 2024 has been accepted (the registration form number of the case is Zhao Gongwang (Criminal) Acceptance Case Zi [2024] No. 316449). This also means that the cyber trolls that may attack Xpeng will also be breached in the near future, and there may also be employees of car companies who will be investigated for this.
In addition to these car companies, Zhiji, who was angrily demanded an official apology by Xiaomi people for writing wrong data some time ago, has also recently suffered from online violence and water army attacks. Zhiji had previously shouted to the official, hoping that the relevant departments could take action to rectify the online trolls. As the competition between car companies becomes increasingly black, and the use of water armies to maliciously attack, the situation is becoming more and more uncontrollable. Especially with the entry of companies with a large user base and organized management of followers, the definition of trolls and cyberbullying will become more difficult.
If China's automobiles want to develop healthily, they must not use the Internet to play that way, and to kill their opponents is to achieve themselves. As a technology-intensive industry, automobiles need a good environment for enterprises to settle down and polish their products and technologies. At present, electric vehicle companies are far less enthusiastic about technology than they are about traffic and marketing. This is not a good phenomenon for the development of the industry.
In addition, let's talk about MEGA's failures and encounters with a large number of "hacks". MEGA was launched on March 1 and is Li Auto's flagship product. Before going public, Li Auto carried out multiple rounds of product warm-up. However, MEGA was maliciously attacked on the Internet due to styling problems, and the car was described as a "coffin car", which affected MEGA's market performance to a certain extent. This may also be due to the "traffic backlash" - in fact, at the beginning of MEGA's debut, there were all kinds of unfavorable comments about its appearance design, but at that time it was only spread in a small circle.
On the other hand, the problem of MEGA sales comes from itself. The shape of the car is indeed more alternative, and at the same time, the price far exceeds the psychological expectations of the market. In addition, in the pure electric MPV market segment, the sales volume of similar products is relatively small.
Previously, Li Auto set a monthly sales target of 8,000 units for MEGA, but the final sales were much lower than that. On April 22, Li Auto announced a price cut of 30,000 yuan for MEGA, less than two months before the product was launched. However, the outside world believes that even after the price reduction of 30,000 yuan, the price of the car is still higher than psychological expectations. Therefore, for MEGA to be resurrected, it is necessary to further adjust the price strategy.