In an embarrassing incident a final week, NIO, a Chinese electric-powered automobile start-up with the said purpose of rivaling Elon Musk’s Tesla in Asia, saw one of its smart automobile models fail in a certain slapstick fashion and the broadest daylight hours possible. According to NIO, the driver initiated a software update whilst the auto turned into stopped due to Beijing’s notorious visitors and proceeded to make matters a great deal, tons worse, by using inadvertently shutting down the automobile on of the busiest streets in u . S . A. Then, the gadget replaces close down the software functionality of the automobile, which, like maximum modern automobiles, controls the whole lot from the guide to the door locks. That ultimate element is prime because the doorways should most effectively be unlocked electronically. However, the occupants had no choice to head viral by sitting it out on Changan Avenue at the same time as the auto spent over an hour updating its structures.

Chinese Tesla Rival Software Glitch Traps Driver for an Hour on Busy Street 1

Bold as Brass on Changan Avenue

Changan Avenue is a 2.4-mile long thoroughfare that passes through some of the country’s most important government and Communist Party buildings. The avenue is adjacent to Tiananmen Square, which houses the National People’s Congress, China’s central bank, and the Communist Party’s central headquarters, Zhongnanhai. It passes between it and the Forbidden City seat of Chinese Imperial Dynasties going back thousands of years. While on this most conspicuous of roads, the driver, who was test driving the vehicle as a potential buyer, “accidentally” took a series of actions that initiated the software update while waiting in traffic.

Chinese Startup’s All-Electric SUV Could Give Tesla Serious Competition

According to one social media report, the software update requires 5 steps and 2 separate confirmations to initiate. A spokesman for the company wrote to The Verge. He said, “before users start to upgrade the software, they receive a clear notice explaining that users need to park their cars during the upgrading and the car’s relevant functionalities will be shut down. The upgrade takes several steps, including entering the password and confirmation. The user tried to engage the upgrade while she was caught in a traffic jam.”

Changan Avenue naturally has tight traffic restrictions and a heavy security presence, so the inert vehicle soon drew the attention of police on the scene.

According to a post on China’s social media platform Weibo, the NIO representative in the car with the potential buyer wrote, “[s]o there we were, parked in Changan Avenue, motionless yet bold as brass. Police officers came, one group after another, yet we could not even wind the window down.”

Days of Social Media Controversy

“If this is what a smart [car] looks like, I’d rather not [be] smart,” said a Weibo user in response to the news, and they were not alone. Over the weekend, there has been no shortage of mockery and disbelief on social media, which has seen a contentious debate spring up over who was at fault for the incident.

Many were quick to point out that a software system that doesn’t anticipate an attempted software update while the car is operating on the road is flawed.

“This is very serious,” one user wrote. “Any relevant staff such as an engineer or project manager with awareness of customer experience would have prevented this.”

Others sprang to the company’s defense, with one exasperated user laying the blame squarely on the driver.

After pointing out the multiple warnings and confirmations a user needs to go through to initiate a software update, they finish by demanding to know, “what does [NIO] need to do for everyone to be satisfied?”

A Stalled Vehicle or a Bump in the Road for NIO?

The incident has taken some of the shine off of NIO’s recent positive press. The Shanghai-based company ended its 2018 fiscal year in good shape, reporting$420 million in revenue and raising $1.15 billion in its successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2018. Sales have been solid, and they have benefitted from the 25% tariff levied against Tesla in response to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese exports.

Founder and Chairman of NIO, William Li Bin, promised last year to deliver 10,000vehicles to consumers in 2018 and NIO beat that goal by more than 1,000 units, selling 11,348 ES8s in 2018. Still, Li knows that Tesla isn’t going anywhere and that NIO will need to compete with them for the fast-growing electric vehicle market in China on their own terms. There’s only so much help tariffs can provide against a competitor like Tesla.

“We still have a lot to learn from Tesla since it has a long history and is a leader in the electric vehicle segment,” said Li. “But we also have our own advantages such as our customer service model and battery swap system.” Being a domestic producer with a lower cost and therefore lower retail price certainly doesn’t hurt either.

The Long Road Ahead To Electric Vehicle Dominance

While such a high-visibility failure of its software system undoubtedly stung the company’s pride, NIO has been holding its own against Tesla for China’s electric automobile market, the largest in the world.

NIO has two models on the market at the moment: the ES8, a 7-seat SUV that retails for about $65,000 before subsidies, and the newly launched ES6, a more affordable SUV model geared toward a broader customer base that retails around $52,000before subsidies.

Meanwhile, the Tesla Model S 75D recently retailed as high as $110,000 as a result of import costs and tariffs. Even without the tariffs, Tesla is at a distinct pricing disadvantage.

This has only helped NIO’s sales and hurt Tesla’s. Trade war tensions between the US and China are blamed for the sharp drop in Tesla sales, which may have fallen 70% over last years after imported cars were hit with a 25% tariff.

NIO, meanwhile, sold more than 2,000 ES8 models in October 2018, while Tesla reportedly only sold 211 cars that same month, according to the China Passenger Car Association.

Tesla disputes these numbers but hasn’t provided its own data, and they are planning on opening a production factory in Shanghai with an annual capacity of 500,000 units in the hopes to bring their product to the Chinese market at a lower price point, something they seem to be particularly concerned about.

When Beijing lowered the tariff on imported motors from the USA at the end of the final year, Tesla introduced that they could reduce the fee in their cars in China using signs, their third rate reduction of the 12 months.

The price sensitivity of Tesla’s automobiles most effective underscores what’s developing into one of the most crucial commercial enterprise competitions inside the world. Even though the overall auto marketplace in China is anticipated to peer a decline in sales in 2019, the electric automobile market is the exception.

In the first 10 months of 2018, over 860,000 electric motors were sold, a 75.6%boom over the identical duration in 2017. With all that potential, it is smooth to see why Li is positive about the future of NIO and why Tesla is eager to get into the market as rapidly as they can, but they can.

“I am nonetheless bullish about China’s vehicle market, specifically in the electrically powered automobile segment, given that it’s miles the new boom driver right here,” Li stated. “[NIO] will hold to consciousness on building high-performance, high-cease EVs to chase further increase.” With the wind at their backs, NIO is well-positioned to definitely compete with Tesla for the Chinese automobile market, constructing up the David and Goliath nature of the competition in the public imagination; when they exercise session, all of the bugs

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Lucia Stokes
Pop culture buff. General organizer. Music evangelist. Reader. Award-winning twitter ninja. Devoted food advocate. Skateboarder, maker, fender owner, Swiss design-head and doodler. Operating at the junction of modernism and sustainability to save the world from bad design. I work with Fortune 500 companies and startups.