Chinese ride-hailing company buys Times Square billboards to shame Tesla

A popular Chinese ride-hailing company that only offers high-end electric vehicles is fed up with Tesla.

IUnicorn, also known as Shenma Zhuanche, expressed its annoyance with the electric carmaker last week when it revealed Times Square billboards that were directed at Tesla — all of which publicly shame the company for delivering faulty vehicles.

On IUnicorn’s Weibo page, the company shared its  new campaign calling out Tesla for bad quality control in China. It also rolled out several large Times Square billboards as part of the campaign. 

Here’s what the billboards looked like, according to the company’s posts. Quartz reports that the messages were only up for 30 minutes. It’s unclear why the notices were pulled so quickly.

Quartz also reports that the company rented three billboards asking for nearly $1 million from Tesla for lengthy repair time on 20 percent of the ride-hailing company’s 278 Tesla vehicles it purchased over the past few years. Quartz reports the company flagged electromechanical issues and 3.5 million minutes the cars were unavailable because of repairs.

The messages roughly translate to: Tesla, fix it or not, Tesla, pay us or not, and Tesla, admit it or not. 

We reached out to Tesla about IUnicorn’s billboard campaign, and we will update this post as soon as we hear back.

In the meantime, Tesla is continuing to deliver Model 3 sedans to China and expects to complete its Shanghai factory by the end of this year.