Tesla’s battle with the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaign in China continues after a Model X owner claims the brakes on his all-electric SUV are faulty. The man was caught admitting that the story is fabricated, telling local media that “I know my car has nothing wrong with it.”
Over the past several months, Tesla has been sparring with owners in China who appear to be a part of an effort to derail the company’s momentum in the country. It all started a couple of months ago at the Shanghai Auto Show when a woman invaded Tesla’s booth at the event by jumping on top of a Model 3 and claiming that her brakes had failed during a drive with her father. The drive ended in an accident, and she blames it on Tesla’s “faulty brakes.”
She was sentenced to serve a few days in jail and has made every attempt to make her case as public as possible. She has gone as far as spraypainting the car as it sat outside of a Tesla showroom in China and has also denied any attempt that Tesla has made to resolve the issue. The automaker published a lengthy statement in May, indicating that it had offered to pay for a third-party company to assess the potential of a brake issue while paying for the study. She denied this and also said that data released by the automaker, which proved that the owner’s father, who was driving the vehicle at the time, traveled at excessive speeds during the journey and also had utilized the brakes successfully many times in the moments leading up to the accident, could have been fabricated or tampered with by Tesla.
The Tesla Model Y is leading China’s electric SUV segment by a wide margin
This hasn’t been the only instance, and those who have decided to turn against the automaker have made it abundantly clear that there will be more attempts in the future to claim that Tesla’s vehicles are faulty and dangerous.
Model X Owner claims faulty brakes, Tesla responds
Now, a Model X owner in China named Mr. Wen is claiming that his vehicle has faulty brakes and is demanding that Tesla provide him with a newly refreshed Model X.
According to a statement on Tesla’s Weibo page, Wen suffered an accident in his vehicle, and Tesla reached out to him to figure out the issue. “At present, the initial remote diagnosis of the cause of the vehicle alarm is the right front wheel speed sensor, and the vehicle used by Mr. Wen at the time of failure…may be due to contamination of the wheel speed sensor or damage to the sensor line,” Tesla said (via @Ray4Tesla). “Mr. Wen’s vehicle has traveled more than 175,000 kilometers, which has exceeded the vehicle warranty.”
Tesla then suggested that the vehicle be towed to a Service Center in China so that it could be examined to determine the reason for failure and fixed properly. However, Wen has continued to drive the car over 800 kilometers, Tesla says, and has gone as far as claiming on the internet “that the vehicle has failed and it was dangerous.”
Tesla says it hopes that Mr. Wen will allow the company to conduct inspections and repair the car so it can be used normally as soon as possible.
Mr. Wen admits to media that “I know my car has nothing wrong with it”
According to Tesla, the blog Teslabot broke a recording of Mr. Wen admitting that the car has no issues. In a series of statements, he said, “I know my car has nothing wrong with it,” and “The coil is aging, or it is worn during the car wash. This is suspected to be the problem, my car will not have any major problems.”
Wen said that he didn’t have money to find media exposure and that “If you don’t make trouble, you can defend your rights normally, our police station will not participate.”
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- Credit: Tesla Weibo via @Ray4Tesla
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- Credit: Tesla Weibo via @Ray4Tesla
According to the post on Weibo, the media outlet Henan Guan Lei TV has deleted all of the reports of Tesla vehicle issues in China.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that those who have claimed that Tesla’s vehicles have issues have admitted that their story was fabricated. It’s actually happened on several occasions, with many of the perpetrators admitting that their issues were made up for media attention.
Tesla has also battled falsified and non-verified reports of lackluster sales figures. Most recently, a claim that indicated Tesla’s registrations in China in May had reduced by 50% was shrugged off by the Secretary General of the Chinese Passenger Car Association.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below, or be sure to email me at joey@teslarati.com or on Twitter @KlenderJoey.
Tesla has reached a notable benchmark in its autonomous driving program after its Robotaxi fleet surpassed one million miles of unsupervised operation. The company made the announcement during its Cybercab event in Austin on September 3.
Tesla Vice President of AI Ashok Elluswamy told attendees he was happy to report the fleet had achieved one million miles of unsupervised Robotaxi operation as a testament to safety.
The new total marked a sharp increase from the 380,000 unsupervised miles Tesla disclosed during its second-quarter 2026 earnings update in late July.
In roughly six weeks, the company added about 620,000 miles. That acceleration followed Tesla’s decision to remove in-vehicle safety monitors from most of its operations outside the San Francisco Bay Area.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla first launched Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025 with safety drivers present. It later began fully unsupervised rides and expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. The San Francisco Bay Area remains the exception, where a safety monitor still rides in the vehicle under California permitting rules.
The company has not released a city-by-city breakdown of the one million unsupervised miles.
The milestone arrived as Tesla began offering public Cybercab rides in Austin. The purpose-built vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and is designed only for autonomous ride-hailing. Production versions joined the existing fleet of modified Tesla vehicles already operating in the service.
Tesla’s unsupervised mileage is growing at a double-digit weekly rate according to earlier company comments, yet its fleet size remains modest compared with established competitors. Waymo has accumulated more than 200 million fully autonomous rider-only miles. Tesla has described its own unsupervised operations as having recorded zero notable incidents in the period leading up to the July update.
The one-million-mile figure reflects Tesla’s shift from supervised testing to broader driverless service in multiple states. It also highlights the company’s strategy of using both existing Model Y vehicles and the new Cybercab to scale its network.
Credit: Tesla
Whether the rapid recent growth continues will depend on further city expansions, regulatory approvals, and the performance of the purpose-built Cybercab in everyday paid rides. Tesla has not specified how many of the latest miles involved the new vehicle versus the rest of the fleet.
The announcement underscores Tesla’s progress toward a larger robotaxi network while illustrating the remaining gap in total autonomous experience relative to longer-operating rivals.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this week that 24-hour Robotaxi service is close. Replying on X to a rider who wanted Cybercab trips all night, he wrote that the capability would arrive “next month or so” once “the next tech to merge on the v15 plan” is ready.
The comment landed on September 4, one day after Tesla opened public Cybercab rides in Austin. It is the clearest near-term timeline yet for overnight unsupervised operation. Tesla’s paid Robotaxi network currently runs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week across Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.
next month or so. the next tech to merge on the v15 plan will enable it.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 4, 2026
That 16-hour window is shorter than the 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. schedule the company used for much of the prior year.
Elluswamy did not name the specific feature or say whether the change would apply first to purpose-built Cybercabs, the existing Model Y fleet, or both. He also offered no city-by-city rollout list. The link to Full Self-Driving v15 is nevertheless significant.
Tesla has described v15 as a step-change architecture with seven parallel improvement tracks and roughly ten times more parameters than earlier builds. Early versions of that software already operate on the Robotaxi fleet and contain about 40 percent of the planned gains.
By July 2026, the unsupervised fleet had logged more than 380,000 miles across six cities in two states with what the company called an impeccable safety record and no notable incidents caused by the vehicles themselves. Tesla has repeatedly argued that camera-based end-to-end neural networks, rather than extra sensors, are the core of the solution.
Overnight service would test that claim in lower-light conditions and would also raise vehicle utilization, a key variable for Robotaxi unit economics. The company has already begun using public Superchargers at night and is building dedicated Robotaxi charging sites.
Riders have asked why software must change if the cars already drive in the dark. The practical answer appears to be reliability and scale: Tesla has held back mass expansion until more of the v15 stack is merged, citing the need for higher confidence before putting thousands of unoccupied vehicles on streets around the clock.
If the next module arrives on the timetable Elluswamy sketched, 24-hour service could begin in October 2026 in at least some markets.
That would mark a shift from a daytime-bounded pilot to a service that can run whenever demand exists, including the late-night hours that have so far remained out of reach.
Tesla is beginning to roll out Full Self-Driving Supervised v14.3.9 with a new active safety layer that can take control even when the driver is operating the car manually.
Tesla AI said the software can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when an imminent collision is detected and Automatic Emergency Braking may not be enough. It may also engage if the system detects heavy distraction or an accidental FSD disengagement.
FSD Supervised v14.3.9 starting to roll out shortly
This release includes a new active safety feature set: FSD Supervised can now activate on your behalf when an imminent collision is detected and Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) may not be enough.
It may also engage if we…
— Tesla AI (@Tesla_AI) September 4, 2026
The capability is essentially Automatic Collision Evasion. However, unlike conventional AEB, which mainly applies the brakes in a straight line, this feature can use steering, braking, and acceleration together if the car calculates that stopping alone will not prevent impact and a safer path exists. The system may change lanes or move toward a shoulder when conditions allow, then continue driving after the immediate threat is handled rather than simply coming to a stop.
The intervention is meant as a last-resort safety net, not a replacement for attentive driving.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.7 early review: FSD saved me from an accident
Tesla’s own description still frames FSD as supervised assistance. Secondary reports on internal release notes say the feature can fire while the car is being driven manually if cabin-camera monitoring suggests the driver is not sufficiently attentive, such as reaching toward the back seat, or if FSD appears to have been turned off unintentionally.
After the emergency maneuver, the car is expected to alert the driver and request a return to manual control.
The safety case is straightforward. Many collisions happen in the last second because a driver is looking away, fumbles a control, or faces an obstacle that braking cannot fully solve. A system that can both recognize that AEB is insufficient and execute a coordinated evasive path can reduce those remaining high-severity events.
Re-engaging after accidental disengagement also addresses a practical failure mode: a small steering nudge that drops FSD at the worst moment. The advantage is a background safety net that uses the same vision stack already running in v14, instead of leaving the car solely to emergency braking once the driver is no longer in command.
The feature still depends on FSD being enabled and, according to reports, an active FSD purchase or subscription. It does not make the vehicle unsupervised. Drivers remain responsible, and Tesla has not published how often the system is expected to intervene or how it will handle false positives.
If the rollout is conservative and the false-alarm rate stays low, the update is a meaningful step: FSD is no longer only a feature the driver turns on. In the rare moments when disaster is already forming, it can step in.
Tesla crosses major Unsupervised Self-Driving milestone
Tesla Robotaxi will be a 24/7 service: here’s when
