Chinese car journalists are told not to be negative on Tesla as it sues customers and media

A new scathing report about Tesla just came out in China. It describes how the automaker is becoming trigger-happy, suing its own customers and the media while auto journalists are being told not to be negative about the American automaker.

To this day, Tesla is the only foreign automaker with a wholly-owned car factory in China, although Toyota is expected to follow in a few years.

Elon Musk made the deal happen with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials back in 2018. Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai became the company’s biggest production hub and its biggest source of revenue and profit.

Tesla would never be where it is today without Gigafactory Shanghai and the Chinese market.

Now, we learn that Tesla is willing to go to great lengths to protect that.

The Associated Press (AP) has just released a fascinating in-depth report about Tesla’s activities in China regarding customers and the media.

The report centers around a new perspective on the highly publicized battle between Tesla and one of its Chinese customers who claimed a brake defect, but it also goes deeper by highlighting a shift in Tesla’s approach to criticism in China.

AP found that Tesla sued “at least six car owners in China who had sudden vehicle malfunctions, quality complaints or accidents they claimed were caused by mechanical failures.”

Tesla also sued “at least six bloggers and two Chinese media outlets that wrote critically about the company.”

This is highly unusual behavior for an automaker.

The report also highlights the close relationship between Tesla and CCP officials, especially Li Qiang, the former party boss of Shanghai who is now China’s premier. He was involved in the Gigafactory Shanghai deal.

It’s not news that Tesla benefited from preferential treatment in China, but the report goes quite a bit further.

AP alleges that local media are instructed not to be negative on Tesla:

Tesla has profited from the largesse of the Chinese state, winning unprecedented regulatory benefits, below-market rate loans and large tax breaks. With a few pointed exceptions, Tesla has enjoyed largely ingratiating coverage in the Chinese press, and journalists told AP they have been instructed to avoid negative coverage of the automaker.

A reporter told AP:

“We were told by our editor that we should not write negatively about Tesla because it is a key company that was introduced and protected by the Shanghai government.”

The report also explains how Tesla wins about 90% of the court cases filed against the automaker by customers who claim a defect.

Many customers complained of Tesla’s lack of communication, leading to filing lawsuits.

If they file lawsuits, they lose, and if they complain publicly, they are the ones getting sued by Tesla and forced to pay the company and make a public apology.

Electrek’s Take

That’s quite a report. It gave a new perspective on Ms. Zhang’s case. Her case made it to Western media in 2021-2022, but never with the level of detail in this report.

The facts are she got into an accident. She claimed it was due to a brake failure. Tesla claimed it was due to a driver mistake.

She felt compelled to protest Tesla over what she saw as a serious safety issue. She was quite persistent with it. Tesla sued her and won because she had no way to prove that a brake defect had caused the accident. She was forced to pay Tesla and make a public apology.

But we also learned that Tesla claimed that other entities were backing her despite no evidence of that whatsoever.

I think there’s room for reflection on Tesla’s part here. Is this what it wants to be: a company that sues its customers and media over criticism?

Like some customers said in the report, Tesla could have avoided much that by simply having better communications with customers.