Trends and Tensions in the Chinese Automotive Industry

TapTechNews, 21 Jun, 2024. Li Pengcheng, CMO of Avita Motors, made a post on his Moments (WeChat equivalent) today, talking about topics such as 'public rewards' in the recent automotive industry.

He said that the automotive industry is getting more and more crazy, always saying that others are cheating or flipping tables. Sometimes thinking about it, the tables are quite innocent. Every company talks about being infringed and announces reporting platforms and rewards for catching monsters, which at least indicates several phenomena:

First: Such things in the entire industry are extremely common, backstabbing everywhere;

Second: Each company suffers deeply from this and hates it but is also in it;

Third: Every company is proving its innocence. The industry seems to be all victims, and there is no offender.

Actually, as long as there is competition, there will be competitive means. With the intensification of competition, many means will move from benign to malicious, which is an inevitable law of nature. In today's situation, relying solely on industry self-regulation and legal affairs to solve this problem is basically impossible. Still, it is hoped that the relevant state departments and industry associations will have an overall solution...'

On the evening of 10 Mar, at the 'Great Wall Motors Intelligent New Energy Dry Goods Conference', Great Wall Motors initiated an initiative to the industry, calling for joining hands to purify the online communication environment and launched the '10 million reward plan', comprehensively opening the online reporting channels for the first time, and cracking down hard on 'online water armies'.

On 19 Jun, Li Yunfei, general manager of BYD brand and public relations, posted that a certain automaker is using dark PR means to demean, pull down and maliciously slander the company's brand and products. Now collecting effective clues and evidence of dark PR from the general public and all sectors of society, with rewards ranging from 200,000 to 5 million RMB for providers of effective clues and evidence.

At the 2024 China Automobile Chongqing Forum some time ago, Li Yunfei also said that the domestic automakers are now competing so fiercely, with all kinds of explicit and implicit, on the table and under the table, both decent and not decent.

Besides, major domestic automakers have all opened official accounts of their legal departments to combat online smear and rumor-mongering.