Zhang Yazhou was sitting in the passenger seat of her Tesla Model 3 when she said she heard her father’s panicked voice: The brakes don’t work! Approaching a red light, her father swerved around two cars before plowing into an SUV and a sedan and crashing into a large concrete barrier.
Stunned, Zhang gazed at the deflating airbag in front of her. She could never have imagined what was to come: Tesla sued her for defamation for complaining publicly about the car’s brakes — and won. A Chinese court ordered Zhang to pay more than $23,000 in damages and publicly apologize to the $1.1 trillion company.
Zhang is not the only one to find herself in the crosshairs of Tesla, which is led by Elon Musk, among the richest men in the world and a self-described “ free speech absolutist.” Over the last four years, Tesla has sued at least six car owners in China who had sudden vehicle malfunctions, quality complaints or accidents they claimed were caused by mechanical failures.
At risk at seeming like I sympathize for Musk (I don’t), anyone else read parts of the article that raise questions?
ransacked? Doesn’t that usually mean plunder? They’re damaging the government in many horrible ways, however, Musk outright stealing from the government would lead to easy challenges making headlines: I wish he’d make it that easy.
Ransack for as in vigorously searching through something could be another sense, but it wasn’t used that way here. I guess it could mean rush through, causing damage. Curious word choice that I can overlook. Reading on…
So it looks like Tesla is resisting compensating Zhang & releasing pre-crash data.
Wait, did Zhang receive any compensation? I thought she hadn’t. I still don’t know. Does the article clearly say?
Besides Zhang’s words of her father’s panic that the brakes aren’t working, did she have solid evidence that the brakes did not work? Post-crash analysis? Independent analysis of untampered logs directly off the car’s hardware?
While I was ready to condemn Musk & Tesla and to ridicule the Chinese government over this, this isn’t satisfying. Not to understate all the other reasons to condemn them, which are clear & also covered in the article, this article leaves unanswered a number of critical questions that it could answer.
Ransacked doesn’t mean plundered, you can ransack your house looking for your keys. Although it also has been plundered, we know they’ve taken data that they shouldn’t have at the very least. Their also taking all the money and putting it in a big pile in their office
As far as the lawsuit, they’re saying Tesla has been stonewalling them. If Tesla paid a settlement, it would’ve included a settlement agreement and likely an NDA - when they say more money, it probably means Tesla made them an offer they refused
dictionary entry
even you wrote ransack … for to denote the other sense
That wasn’t an accident, it was an example of the more common meaning and how the article should be interpreted…
Outside a historical context, recklessly/destructively searching is almost always the meaning. It doesn’t even imply you found anything, so you ransack and pillage, you ransack and seize, you ransack but don’t take anything