Chinese automakers BYD, Great Wall Motor, and Xpeng have won civil cases for the protection of business reputation against online content creators who spread defamatory materials. According to China Central Television, the courts ordered the authors to remove the publications, publicly apologize, and pay compensation totaling up to 2.0187 million yuan, which is equivalent to approximately US$283,000.
The largest recovery is related to the BYD case. The Longzhu Jiche account for almost 5 years published videos with edited footage of fires that were not related to the company's cars, but were passed off as cases of self-ignition of BYD cars. The court of second instance recognized this as a violation of the right to reputation and ordered to pay more than 2 million yuan in compensation. In the Great Wall Motor case, the court found that the Dayange Shuoche account systematically published derogatory content that went beyond acceptable criticism, and awarded compensation of 200,000 yuan.
The Xpeng case was considered separately, where a blogger spread unconfirmed statements about battery leaks and alleged refusals of warranty repairs. The court found the information to be false and awarded compensation of 100,000 yuan. The report also mentions an incident with an AI-generated video falsely associated with Xpeng: the police confirmed the forgery and placed the author under administrative arrest for 10 days.
