(Asian Tech Press) Someone broke the news that an official Chinese media outlet manipulated a woman's Tesla protest at Shanghai Auto Show.
How exactly did the month-long storm of customer complaints faced by Tesla in China come about and fester? Recently, someone on China's Twitter-like Weibo seems to have answered: an audio recording of a Tesla owner shows that an official media outlet is behind the protests against Tesla.
The recording, which recently circulated on Weibo, shows a male Tesla owner, who is surnamed Wen and from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, broke the news that he had paid Henan Television (HNTV), a state-owned provincial television broadcaster, to hype himself.
The media did not respond, but deleted the previous video reports about Wen's defending rights, and also emptied all posts of the account named HNTV on Weibo.
One of the programs of HNTV called Dacankao, continuously reported on Wen's complaints about its electric vehicle since May 27. According to HNTV's reports, on May 8, 2021, the man was driving his Tesla Model X, on the highway when its speed suddenly dropped from 100 km/h to 60 km/h, while the centralized control system showed an alarm and disabilities information.
"I spent $234,562 (1.5 million yuan) on a suicide toy!" In the video reported by HNTV, Wen appeared angry. He demanded that Tesla must admit that the brake system failed, must give an official apology, and required that Tesla replace him with a new Model X for free.
On May 28, Tesla responded to Wen's request, saying that according to the initial remote diagnosis, the vehicle alarm going off was caused by alarming of the right front wheel speed sensor, not brake failure.
Wen's claims on the Internet, including the vehicle's "high-speed brakes failed", "nearly had an accident", and the use of terms such as "suicide toy", which Tesla believes are to create social hotspots. And it will not meet Wen's request for a free replacement to the new Model X.
It is reported that Wen's car is now parked in the Zhengzhou-Futa Tesla Store. Coincidentally, the Model 3 of Ms. Zhang, the woman who had a Tesla protest at the Shanghai Auto Show, also happens to be parked here. The two cars in question are parked side by side, which means a lot.
On June 6, a netizen broke out the recording of Wen's negotiation with Tesla. Multiple information confirmed that the recording is real, for the two bargaining sessions on May 8 and May 31.
What is surprising about this recording is that the man said that a woman's Tesla protest at the Shanghai Auto Show was "manipulated by a group of people from HNTV".
Wen also said, "I ran the scam, I spent money. American Tesla, (I barked) American Tesla one after another, to see who can bear this. Whoever says I'm bad is a traitor, is a betrayer of the state."
At present, the official media involved in the recording, HNTV, has cleared all posts on the social platform Weibo. And its program Dacankao, which continuously reported on Wen's event, has deleted all reports on Tesla in that issue, including related content on the two major social media platforms Douyin, TikTok's Chinese version, and Weibo.
On Weibo, numerous netizens have questioned HNTV, but there has been no response.
However, on Monday afternoon, Henan Traffic Radio, a subsidiary of HNTV, which allegedly received money for Wen's hype, issued a statement denying all allegations.
ATP understands that Chinese officials appear to be cooling down the increasingly hot news of the Tesla issue. Several official Chinese media sources have revealed that they have been notified to avoid reports of defending against Tesla.
In addition, Tesla has stepped up its efforts to deal with the media from a legal perspective, creating a "Tesla Legal Department" account on Weibo to send targeted messages to some self-publishers who accuse them, asking them for the removal of inaccurate content.
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