The video shows a woman in a T-shirt saying ‘The brakes are not working’ shouting similar accusations at a car show in Shanghai.
An unhappy customer who stormed the Tesla stall at the Shanghai Motor Show in China to get on top of a car, create a stir on social media and apologize to the company will be detained for five days be, Shanghai police said Tuesday.
Police said the woman and a female accomplice – identified only by their surnames, Zhang and Li – caused chaos at the fair on Monday when they arrived at the Tesla show “to express their dissatisfaction due to a consumer dispute “.
Zhang was detained for disrupting public order while Li received a warning, police said.
Videos that went viral on Monday showed Zhang wearing a T-shirt with the words “The brakes are not working” and shouting similar accusations while staff and security struggled to restore calm.
Late Tuesday, Tesla issued a statement apologizing for not handling the customer’s complaint in a timely manner, saying it would do self-service over its service and operations in China.
Tesla sells about 30 percent of its cars in China, manufactured at its factory in Shanghai. But it has occasionally been criticized on issues such as complaints about battery fires.
Monday’s incident prompted state broadcaster CCTV to call for an investigation into reported brake problems on Tesla cars, while China’s anti-graft watchdog weighed in with a comment that such disputes should be resolved within the rule of law. .
“Individuals should not take extreme measures, and businesses should not be arrogant and unreasonable,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said late Tuesday.
Tesla said Monday the woman was a vehicle owner who was in a collision earlier this year. It called the “quick transgressions” for the crash and added in a statement on social media that he had negotiated with her about returning the car, but the talks came to a halt over a third party inspection.
Zhang and Li could not be contacted for comment.
The incident on Tuesday still attracted social media attention and covered two of the top 10 topics on the Twitter-like Weibo platform.
Last month, Tesla came under scrutiny in China when the military banned its cars from entering its complexes, citing security room over cameras in its vehicles, sources told Reuters news agency.
This prompted founder Elon Musk to say that if Tesla uses cameras to spy on China or anywhere, it will be shut down. Tesla said earlier this month that cameras in its cars will not be activated outside North America.