Chinese woman sues Tesla over an accident with «faulty brakes» — court orders her to pay $23,000

Chinese citizen Zhang Yazhou sued Tesla in 2021 after she was involved in a Model 3 accident — allegedly due to «faulty brakes».

At the time of the accident, the woman was in the passenger seat, while her father, who was driving the car, was hospitalized after the accident «. Yazhou initially held public protests against Tesla, for which she was even detained for several days by the police, and later went to court to seek compensation from the company.

The court, as reported by Associated Pressinstead, sided with Elon Musk’s company and supported the manufacturer’s claim for defamation — now Zhou has to pay Tesla $23,000 herself (almost like the average price of a used Model 3). It is worth noting that the automaker initially demanded about $684,000 in the counterclaim.

In addition, the woman has to make «public apologies». Zhang is still trying to appeal the outcome, but Tesla — under growing pressure — has released telemetry data from her car, which apparently showed that the brakes were working properly.

The AP report claims that over the past four years, Tesla has been sued by «at least» six car owners in China complaining about mechanical problems in their cars. It is also interesting that out of 81 court decisions from the Chinese government database, in which Tesla owners accused the company of various safety or quality problems, the plaintiffs won only 8 cases.

In addition, it turned out that the automaker had sued «at least six bloggers and two Chinese media outlets» who had publicly criticized it.