Tesla has entered the spotlight again in China, not because of a price cut, but because of a report on quality issues.
In an investigative report published on Friday, Chinese media Pingwest mentioned that Tesla is doing whatever it can to lower quality standards in order to boost production and sales in China, and that bad parts are likely to be loaded onto cars.
In addition to the parts chaos, some suppliers said that the huge production pressure was overwhelming suppliers, according to the report. And when production requirements reach a critical point, suppliers' solution is simple, which is to bring faulty parts, or even inferior products, directly to use.
Some employees told Pingwest that in Tesla's open office area, they often heard the discussion that as the quality of parts declined, the cars made in the Shanghai factory had many problems, and the quality standard score kept dropping accordingly. If released according to the original standards, no car would pass the quality test. But their solution was not to improve quality. Instead, they lowered the factory standards after doing a complete car inspection.
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The report said that even some Tesla engineers lamented that although the appearance looks all Tesla, the difference in quality control is not insignificant, "this (Shanghai factory) car is another car altogether, it is simply a defective product".
In response to the above report, on December 26, Grace Tao, Tesla's vice president of external affairs, responded, "Our legal affairs is already preparing to sue Pingwest, and we believe they will take responsibility for the impact of his words and actions."
Previously Tesla China had responded that the article was inaccurate, had many logical problems and was "clearly not carefully reasoned and factually correct."
The full Pingwest report can be accessed here (in Chinese).
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