Tesla have been in the news in pretty much entirely a positive light, but this doesn’t mean that they can’t make the occasional mistake and land in the news in a less attractive manner. Case in point, a recent test drive for their Model S in China ended less than impressively, as the car crashed into a Mazda 6 in what was described as a spectacular collision.
Looking at pictures from the incident, it’s clear that it was a pretty serious crash, but thankfully we haven’t heard any news about injuries so far. It should be noted that the people riding in the Model S were already confirmed to have gotten off unharmed, but we couldn’t find a similar confirmation for the ones in the Mazda. On the other hand, if there was something serious about the incident, it would have come out in the news already in all likelihood.
Tesla have been facing some difficulties in the Chinese market lately, and they don’t even have any official stores in the country at this point. They do, however, have several charging stations already, including superchargers, which is not bad progress for their spread into the country. Reports have claimed that the closest store to the location was around 300 kilometers away, back in Shanghai, so it’s questionable what kind of “test drive” the Model S was performing there, and it was likely an unofficial one.
It’s worth noting that despite the fact that the crash looks quite bad at first sight, it’s a good example of the kind of safety and reliability offered by modern cars. The vehicles are designed to crumple upon impact, preserving the lives of passengers inside at the cost of the car’s own integrity. This has obviously worked as intended, judging from the pictures of the incident, and it could actually be used to speak in Tesla’s defense to some extent. They obviously know what they’re doing when it comes to designing a safe car.
There has been no comment on the situation from either company so far, but knowing previous similar incidents with other popular names in the auto industry, it’s not likely we’ll hear anything from them. It was obviously an embarrassing situation and both companies would probably be trying to sweep it under the rug and “help” people forget that it happened. And we can’t actually blame them either, considering that the companies themselves had little to do with this problem and shouldn’t be getting negative press for practically no reason. Hopefully, people reading the reports about the situation would realize that as well and not judge either company based on the incident.