On the afternoon of May 30th, the defamation case between Tesla (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and Ms. Zhang was ruled on in the first instance. Ms. Zhang was ordered to publicly apologize and compensate Tesla with over 170,000 yuan. In April 2021, at the Shanghai Auto Show, Ms. Zhang climbed onto the roof of a Tesla wearing a T-shirt that read “Brake Failure” to “safeguard rights”.
According to information from Tesla, the case number is (2021) Hu 0118 Civil First Instance 17510, with Tesla as the plaintiff and Ms. Zhang as the defendant. In the afternoon of May 30th, the Qingpu District Court in Shanghai issued a first-instance judgment: Ms. Zhang must issue a public apology statement and compensate Tesla a total of 172,275 yuan for various losses.
The court ruling indicated that Ms. Zhang failed to provide any evidence proving the existence of brake failure in the vehicle involved in the case. During the trial, Ms. Zhang explicitly admitted that her assertion of brake failure was a subjective judgment, which Tesla never acknowledged as a fact.
Throughout the legal process, Ms. Zhang did not request a judicial assessment on whether the involved vehicle had brake failure. According to the principle of whoever claims must provide evidence, Ms. Zhang should bear the legal consequences of failing to present supporting evidence.
Additionally, as determined by the public security authorities, the cause of the traffic accident was attributed to an unrelated driver failing to maintain a safe distance from the front vehicle, resulting in full responsibility for the accident.
The court deemed that Ms. Zhang’s action of defamation was groundless as she recklessly accused Tesla of brake failure without any objective evidence.
Despite knowing the lack of solid evidence, Ms. Zhang deliberately chose the media day at the Shanghai Auto Show and wore a T-shirt with “Brake Failure” printed on it, climbed onto a display car, and shouted “Tesla brake failure”. By leveraging on-site media to widely spread this unverified information, her actions were clearly intentional and negligent, damaging the reputation of Tesla’s Shanghai company.
On April 19, 2021, at the Shanghai Auto Show, Ms. Zhang stood atop a Tesla roof wearing a “Brake Failure” T-shirt advocating for her rights. That afternoon, Tesla China’s Vice President, Tao Lin, responded to the rights protection incident at the auto show, stating that Tesla had no room for compromise.
The following day, April 20th, the Qingpu Sub-Bureau of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau officially announced on their Weibo that a woman involved in the “Tesla auto show rights protection” incident, Zhang, was administratively detained for disturbing public order for five days, while another person, Li, received a warning. On the morning of the 25th, Ms. Zhang’s administrative detention was lifted.
On May 26, 2023, in the lawsuits where Ms. Zhang accused Tesla of violating her reputation rights and personal privacy, the court at the first instance rejected her claims.