Tesla won a lawsuit on Wednesday against a Chinese customer who staged a protest during the 2021 Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition. The Tesla owner, surnamed Li, was ordered by court to publicly apologize to the US electric vehicle maker and pay for due damages.
At the April 2021 Shanghai Auto show, two women, including Li from Xi'an city, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province and Zhang from Zhengzhou city, central China's Henan Province, protested at the Tesla booth, wearing white T-shirts with words "Tesla brake failure", expressing their own grievances about alleged Tesla quality and claiming the brake failures occurred while driving their Tesla vehicles.
The ruling came after a Shanghai court commissioned a judicial appraisal organization to appraise the condition of the vehicle, and the results showed the braking system of Li's Tesla Model 3 was operating normal, which complied with relevant safety rules.
Li was ordered by court to publicly apologize to Tesla, pay the damages, and cover the cost of the vehicle appraisal, totaling 47,390 yuan ($6,668).
The court also ordered Li to delete all her statements and comments on her Weibo that damaged Tesla's reputation, and to apologize to Tesla on Weibo with a statement displayed for no less than 15 days.
Li was previously given an administrative warning after protesting at the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, while Zhang was briefly detained for standing on top of one of the exhibited Tesla model and shouting "Tesla brake failed me" repeatedly.
There have been several accidents involving Tesla vehicles in recent years. On November 5 2022, a car accident involving Tesla Model Y happened in Chaozhou, South China's Guangdong Province, killing two and injuring three. The driver, surnamed Zhan, claimed the accident was caused by a brake failure in the Tesla car he was driving.
China is Tesla's second largest market and Shanghai hosts one of Tesla's most important production bases. Its vehicle sales in the Chinese mainland market account for more than 30 percent of Tesla's global sales, according to Tesla's first-quarter report this year.
（Picture: Veer）
