Chinese IT giant Huawei sued a local car influencer for 140,000 USD over Maextro S800 luxury sedan criticism. The blogger responded that he would countersue Huawei for 340,000 USD.

A few weeks ago, Huawei released a series of videos. In the video they compared the S800 to the Mercedes Maybach S680 in various settings, including a ‘crab walk’ test that we covered in a previous article. In one of the other videos, they tested the suspension systems by driving both the S800 and the Maybach S680 through a small pond of water, glass, and sand.

The results showed that the S800 left no trace on the water or other materials. And the Maybach crashed the glass and splashed water everywhere. Huawei promoted this comparison to highlight the S800’s superior driving comfort and its Turing Dragon Architecture, a platform that features a fully integrated architecture, enabling active sensing, central control, intelligent reasoning, and autonomous learning. However, this raised skepticism among car bloggers.

A car influencer Racing Frappuccino (赛车星冰乐) released a video on Weibo, claiming that Huawei’s comparison video was carefully calculated using complex mathematical formulas. They calculated the S800’s passing speed and curb weight, and ensured the pond’s depth (4.5 cm) was just right for the S800 to cross without splashing any water or other materials, unlike the Maybach. and this soon led to legal problems for him.

He implied that this video can not genuinely reflect the S800’s superior driving comfort or suspension system. and He further suggested that this was a typical Huawei marketing action. which is targeting the patriotic Chinese upper middle class who strongly support domestic brands. The video caught a large amount of attention over the internet. Later he uploaded another trolling apology video. In the video, he imitated the official Huawei launch tone as a response to Huawei’s protest.

Background: Huawei is often seen as a patriotic brand due to its chip war with the U.S. back a few years ago, and the brand is often accused of using that as its marketing point.

More about Maextro S800

The Maextro S800 is a large luxury sedan from Huawei and JAC. It will start sales this year and will be available in Huawei’s Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA) stores. This car adopts two-color body paint, 20-inch wheels with self-aligning wheel caps, and a LiDAR sensor on the roof. It is a large sedan with dimensions of 5480/2000/1536 mm (length, width, height), and a wheelbase of 3370 mm.

The Maextro S800 adopts BEV (battery electric vehicle) and EREV (extended-range electric vehicle) powertrain variants. The BEV variant is available with three electric motors (each for 160 kW) only with a combined power of 635 kW (852 hp). The EREV variant of this car goes with dual-motor 4WD for 390 kW (523 hp) and a 1.5-liter range extender as standard. There is also a tri-motor version available with a peak power output of 635 kW.

Source: Weibo