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Why a Chinese Tesla Owner Was Ordered to Pay RMB 172,275 After Brake Complaints

Tesla owner Zhang Yazhou alleged her Model 3’s brakes failed in a 2021 crash. The ensuing reputation-rights case brought an apology order and a RMB 172,275 award, but it was not an independent mechanical ruling on the brakes.
Entry101 Date Time3 min MechanicCarCody Team
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A Shanghai court ordered Tesla Model 3 owner Zhang Yazhou to apologize publicly and pay RMB 172,275 after Tesla sued over her public statements about a 2021 crash. Chinese reporting says an appeals court upheld the ruling in July 2025, and a June 2026 report says her retrial application was rejected. The case concerned Tesla’s reputation-rights claim—not a standalone mechanical ruling that established whether the car’s brakes were defective.

What happened in the crash?

Zhang said the brakes on her Tesla Model 3 failed during a February 2021 crash in Henan, which injured her parents. Tesla disputed her account. Police attributed the crash to her father failing to keep a safe following distance, according to the Associated Press’s account of the dispute (AP).

Those are competing accounts of the accident, not interchangeable findings: brake failure was Zhang’s allegation, while the police explanation cited following distance. The reporting does not establish an independent mechanical test proving that the brakes failed.

Why did Zhang have to pay Tesla?

After Zhang made public complaints about the crash, Tesla brought a reputation-rights lawsuit against her. In a first-instance ruling reported in May 2024, a Shanghai court ordered her to apologize publicly and pay RMB 172,275 in compensation and costs. Contemporary reports rendered the amount differently in U.S. dollars: the Associated Press later described it as approximately US$23,000, while CnEVPost gave US$23,810 (CnEVPost). The precise reported award is the renminbi figure, not a fixed dollar amount.

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The ruling addressed Zhang’s public statements and Tesla’s reputation-rights claim. It should not be read as a court’s independent engineering determination that the Model 3’s brakes worked properly or that no defect existed. The Associated Press reported that Zhang could not prove brake failure in that case (AP).

Did Zhang win her appeal?

No. Chinese reporting says the Shanghai Second Intermediate People’s Court upheld the result on July 11, 2025. A report in June 2026 says the Shanghai High People’s Court rejected Zhang’s application for a retrial (Jiemian). The primary judgments were not available in the reporting reviewed, so these procedural outcomes are described here as reported rather than as a direct reading of the court documents.

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Is the vehicle-data dispute the same case?

No. Zhang’s claims concerning vehicle data are a separate legal matter; they are not the reputation-rights case over her public statements. A late-2025 report said Tesla was ordered to provide 30 minutes of pre-crash driving data and that Tesla appealed (CnEVPost). The outcome of that separate appeal is not established by the available reporting, so it should not be treated as resolved by the defamation appeal or retrial decision.

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What does the case say—and not say—about criticism of Tesla?

Zhang told the Associated Press, “As a consumer, even if I said something wrong, I have the right to comment and criticize. I spoke about my feelings as a user of the car. It has nothing to do with damaging their reputation.” The Shanghai High People’s Court, as quoted by AP, said judgments are the result of a “fair trial” based on the “objective facts of the case” (AP).

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The outcome is specific to this lawsuit and its reported record; it is not a general ruling that all consumer complaints about Tesla are unlawful, nor does it settle the technical question of what caused the crash. AP also reported that its review of a Chinese government court database found 81 civil judgments in which car owners sued Tesla over safety, quality, or contract disputes; owners won in nine of those cases. Those figures describe AP’s review, not every Tesla dispute in China and not a brake-specific success rate (AP).

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