While many car manufacturers were busy announcing concepts and forthcoming cars at this year Shanghai Auto ShowTesla had other things to sort out at the auto show booth. A protester climbed on top of a Tesla Model 3 and started yelling about allegedly malfunctioning brakes in Tesla’s cars, from a Bloomberg report
The woman was wearing a T-shirt with a Tesla logo that read “ Brake lost control, ” and shouted the same phrase repeatedly before cab security detained her. Bloomberg
The woman has been identified simply as Ms. Zhang, according to a statement by Tesla cited by the Wall Street JournalZhang has been linked to previous protests in which she claimed that the brakes in his father’s Model 3 failed and put her family at risk in an accident earlier this year, according to the WSJ
Tesla said in a statement on Weibo that the protester was a Tesla customer from Henan Province, whose father was involved in an accident in February in which his Model 3 crashed into another vehicle.
The woman had demanded a full refund, claiming the crash was caused by a technical problem with the car, Tesla said. However, the company said the woman’s father had crashed due to overspeed. The company said it had been in contact with the woman and was willing to help her find a solution.
Tesla seemed to have a conciliatory tone about the woman’s situation, claiming it tried to negotiate with the woman and come to a satisfactory conclusion in the aftermath of the accident.
Grace Tao, a senior executive and vice president of Tesla, further said she was confident that many customer complaints are based on misunderstandings, and that May are not the best quote to give in situations like this. Essentially, Tao’s comment is from the WSJ is a hand gesture and ‘user error’ refutation of problems far from the harmless but annoying errors that technical users go through.
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When product errors potentially endanger people’s lives, tensions flare up and you get situations like this protest. So it appears that the exchanges between Tesla and Ms. Zhang are not going well for either side and this is not the first protest involving Ms. Zhang, according to BloombergThis latest protest did not end well, with security officers required to physically restrain the protester.
Tesla reinforced security in its booth after the altercation, but at the time it seemed incomprehensible given that the woman caused a very public uproar that started trending on social media and garnered a lot of attention and solidarity from other Tesla owners with their own grievances .
