How high the market and public opinion used to praise you, how miserable it may be after that. The incident of protecting the roof rights of Tesla car owners at the Shanghai Auto Show was in an uproar on April 19, and now the storm is still going on.

On the evening of April 25, the owner of the car said in a post on Weibo that Tesla had never communicated with him actively, let alone had an active attitude towards resolving the matter. Tesla also raised her own doubts about the data released on the 22nd, saying it was not the original data of her vehicle.

Judging from the current information, rights owners and Tesla still have their own opinions on many details. However, whether there is a reversal or not, Tesla is experiencing the most serious public relations crisis since entering China, which is reminiscent of Samsung's original "explosive door" incident.

In the Chinese market, Tesla and Samsung are also foreign brands, who also enjoyed large-scale growth dividends in the early stage of the development of the industry, and also encountered or are experiencing a cliff decline in word-of-mouth. What should Tesla learn from the three-star decline?

1. From occupying the user's mind to losing the user's trust

In the process of the rapid development of new energy vehicles in the past few years, Tesla can be called a leader in both the product level and the technical level. If you have to compare with the mobile phone industry, Tesla is not only like Apple, which leads the industry in the smartphone era, but also comparable to Samsung's position in China at its peak in terms of market share.

As a star company in the field of electric vehicles and with the halo of CEO Elon Musk, Tesla can be said to be a company living in the spotlight. Any news about it, whether positive or negative, can become a frequent visitor to the list of hot searches on major news platforms.

On April 22, 2014, Musk came to China for the first time, and the first batch of Chinese users officially took over the car keys of Model S from him. Since then, Tesla has embarked on a journey to subvert the traditional automobile industry in China.

Tesla's earlier product strategy is similar to the "inverted pyramid", from high to low propulsion model, from the early emergence of the electric sports car Roadster, to the later high-end sedan Model S, large SUV Model X set the benchmark in the field of high-end electric vehicles, in the eyes of many people, Tesla's products are equivalent to high-end electric vehicles, which also laid the foundation for the hot sales of Model 3 and Model Y later, because the minds of users have been firmly occupied.

However, with the increasing sales of Tesla's products, the problems exposed are also increasing day by day. And because of the halo effect, any information about the company is likely to be magnified.

After the rights protection incident at the Shanghai auto show, on April 25, a Tesla car collided with a two-wheeled electric car in Siming District, Xiamen City, the reason is not clear; on April 23, Guangzhou Nansha Port Express Traffic Control truck and Tesla, a number of Tesla cars are suspected to be stopped by road controllers, making it the target of fire again.

In fact, throughout China, there are a large number of traffic accidents every day, but it is an undeniable fact that Tesla received far more attention after the accident than other car brands. For this reason, the way enterprises deal with problems under the public relations crisis is also related to how far the brand can go in the Chinese market in the future.

During the prolonged crisis, the response of Tao Lin, vice president of foreign affairs of Tesla, became the target of public criticism. Expressions such as "she contributed all the recent negative news,"We have no way to compromise," and "Tesla has no public relations fees and no resources to the media," not only stood on the opposite side of the media, but also infuriated the broad masses of onlookers.

Then Tesla released an official response on Weibo, which said: "We are always willing to cooperate fully with the omni-directional testing by state-level third-party authorities," and "at the same time, we need to make it clear that intransigence to unreasonable demands is also our attitude."

The strong response of Tesla executives caused a strong backlash from public opinion, and many state media also spoke out one after another. Xinhua News Agency commented: who gave Tesla the strength to be "uncompromising"? The Central political and Law Commission commented: where is the responsibility? Where is the responsibility? Whether compromised or not, Tesla must face the torture of Chinese customers. Under pressure, Tesla issued an apology on the evening of April 20 and said that a special group had been set up to solve the problem sincerely.

Like Samsung, which experienced the "explosive door" incident at the beginning, Tesla's reputation continued to decline after the influence of public opinion, and it is his duty to cooperate with relevant departments to investigate the truth of the accident, and it is an unavoidable responsibility to take consumers' demands seriously.

2. The last straw

New energy vehicle is an important track of national strategic layout. One of the purposes of introducing Tesla is to let this catfish stir and activate China's automobile industry and market, so as to promote the development of the whole new energy industry chain. Today, more than half of this goal has been achieved.

In China, numerous followers of Tesla, both new car-building forces and traditional car companies, regard Tesla as an important reference for research and benchmarking. In the face of Tesla's sales in China, many models such as BYD Han EV, Xiaopeng P7 and so on will even refer directly to Model 3 in pricing.

But the affirmation of the market and the pursuit of users should not become Tesla's arrogant capital.

Looking back on Samsung's development in China at that time, the "explosion gate" of Galaxy Note 7 took place in 2016. But before that, Samsung's smartphone market share in China had begun to decline, with a peak of more than 20%, but only 7.6% in 2015 and now less than 1%, which is classified as "Others" in the domestic mobile phone sales list.

Combined with the background, the "explosion door" is not the reason for the collapse of Samsung smartphones in the Chinese market, but can only be seen as the last straw to crush the camel at best. The more fundamental reason is the rise of local smartphone brands in China. Samsung has ushered in a number of tough competitors such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo and so on.

Although Samsung is still the brand with the highest market share in the global mobile phone market, if we only look at the Chinese market, the substitutability of Samsung products is very strong, and Chinese smartphones have led the world in many core technologies. Samsung does not have much competitiveness in terms of performance-to-price ratio and product features.

The field of new energy vehicles today is very much like the smartphone industry a few years ago. With more and more capital pouring into the upper and lower reaches of the industrial chain, the field of new energy vehicles is becoming more and more standardized, competing with open resource integration capabilities and user experience and response speed.

At the same time, China's overall R & D strength is also leaping forward in the key technologies of smart cars, such as self-driving, artificial intelligence, battery technology, and so on. China alone accounts for two of the top five battery manufacturers in the world. in addition, China also has the most perfect manufacturing supply chain system in the world.

After the catfish Tesla entered China, it made the domestic competition more fierce with the speed visible to the naked eye. During this year's Shanghai Auto Show, a large army of new energy products, including ET7, SAIC Zhiji L7, Xiaopeng P5, polar krypton 001, and so on, attacked. Although the brand recognition is still inferior to Tesla, the price and product power have let consumers see changes.

At this stage, Tesla's product power still belongs to the first echelon in the field of new energy vehicles, and the new energy market is still growing at a high speed. The emergence of the rights protection incident of the Shanghai auto show may disrupt Tesla's growth momentum in the short term, but it will not necessarily deal a fatal blow to Tesla in the long run.

Drawing lessons from the changes that have taken place in the smartphone industry, what is really likely to sound the alarm for Tesla is the rising independent brands in China. Tesla's next market situation in China depends first of all on its attitude and ability to cope with the crisis, and more importantly on the guarantee of product quality. does such frequent brake failure mean that there is something wrong with the product? Tesla needs to give a clear explanation.

After all, industry dividends will gradually disappear over time, and latecomers can also slowly accumulate in terms of brand potential energy. The future new energy vehicle market will be an era of fighting for real knives and guns. If the products of other car companies gradually achieve overall transcendence in terms of performance-to-price ratio and product power, then Tesla will most likely face the risk of market share being squeezed.