Shenma’s billboard rendering on Times Square.
A Chinese ride-hailing company says faulty Teslas cost it $1 million
The electronic messages on the billboards were in Chinese:
“Tesla, fix it or not,”
“Tesla, compensate or not,” and “Tesla, admit it or not.”
Printed under those slogans were Shenma’s loss in numbers—
including the 20% fault rate and 3.5 million minutes of driving time lost due to cars took out of service for repairs.
iUNICORN, also known as Shenma Zhuanche, is a Chengdu-based ride-hailing company focused on high-end electric cars.
Last Wednesday (April 24), it rented three billboards on the Thomson Reuters building in Times Square to demand compensation from Tesla, a Shenma spokesperson said.
Shenma said that 20% of the 278 Teslas it purchased in 2016 and 2017 had electromechanical issues;
the time-consuming repair process took an average of 45 days, costing Shenma some 6.5 million yuan ($970,000), the company said on social media site Weibo (link in Chinese) late last week.
The messages were taken down half an hour after they went up, and Shenma is looking into why,
according to the company’s spokesperson. Shenma said it didn’t take photos in the short time the messages were up, but did provide a rendering (above).
Shenma said it tried contacting Tesla multiple times but the carmaker has “low efficiency in internal communications” and the complaints “take too long,” according to the Weibo post.
Quartz
https://qz.com/1607342/a-chinese-ride-hailing-company-says-faulty-teslas-cost-it-1-million/
Tesla criticized by China ride-hailing firm in Times Square billboards – Business Insider