- Avatr said Elon Musk shared inaccurate information and invited the Tesla CEO to witness a wind tunnel test of the Avatr 12.
- This comes after a video raised skepticism about the Avatr 12's drag coefficient.
Avatr Technology has invited Elon Musk to witness its wind tunnel tests after a video questioning the Avatr 12's coefficient of drag caught the attention of the Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO.
"Mr. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, retweeted false information about the 'Avatr 12 wind resistance coefficient' posted by a blogger in China," said the company, which is backed by Changan Automobile, CATL and Huawei, on Weibo last night.
"The Avatar 12 will undergo wind tunnel test soon, and we invite Mr. @ElonMusk, to be there to witness it," Avatr wrote, along with an invitation letter.
To be accurate, Musk is not the founder of Tesla, but the CEO of the US EV maker.
On May 2, automotive blogger @苏黎世贝勒爷 posted a video on Weibo claiming that the wind resistance of a domestic EV model, which is claimed to be record-breaking, was found to be at the same level as a fuel car 20 years ago.
The video reveals the model to be the Avatr 12, although the blogger does not directly mention the name of the car to minimize legal risks.
The blogger's tests show that the Avatr 12's wind resistance at 120 kilometers per hour is 0.2818, much higher than the 0.21 that Avatr markets.
Avatr's legal department responded on Weibo on May 3 that the information posted by the blogger was "completely untrue" and that the technical parameters of its products should be based on official releases.
The EV maker said at the time that it would soon conduct public tests according to lab schedules of professional organizations.
The video was reposted on the Musk-owned X platform and received a no-comment retweet from the Tesla CEO yesterday.
The video has now been removed from mainstream social media platforms in China for unknown reasons. The blogger said he did not delete the video.
Avatr, formerly known as Changan Nio, was founded by Changan and Nio (NYSE: NIO) on July 10, 2018, when each party took a 50 percent stake in the company. At present, Nio has largely exited from the company.
In late August 2021, Changan, CATL, and Huawei jointly announced the updated Avatr brand, saying at the time that they would build EVs based on a co-created CHN architecture, where C stands for Changan, H for Huawei, and N for CATL.
The Avatr 12 sedan was originally launched in China on November 10, 2023 and received an update in March last year, and currently starts at RMB 269,900 ($37,370).
($1 = RMB 7.2217)
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