Chinese IT giant Huawei sued local auto influencers for $140,000 over criticism of the Maextro S800’s luxurious sedan. The blogger replied that he would refute Huawei for USD 340,000.
A few weeks ago, Huawei released a series of videos. In the video, we compared the S800 with the Mercedes Maybach S680 in various settings, including the “Crabwalk” test discussed in a previous article. In one other video, we tested the suspension system by driving both the S800 and Maybach S680 from a small pond of water, glass and sand.
The results showed that the S800 leaves no traces on water or other materials. Then Maybach crashed the glass and poured water everywhere. Huawei is a platform that facilitates this comparison and features the S800’s excellent driving comfort and a fully integrated architecture, allowing active sensing, central control, intelligent reasoning, and autonomous learning. However, this raised skepticism among car bloggers.
Automotive influencer racing Frappuccino has released a video on Weibo, claiming that Huawei’s comparison video was carefully calculated using complex mathematical formulas. They calculated the passing speed of the S800 and the weight of the curb, and confirmed that unlike Maybach, the S800 was just right to cross without splashing water or other materials. And this soon brought legal issues to him.
He implied that this video could not truly reflect the S800’s excellent driving comfort or suspension system. And he further suggested that this is a typical Huawei marketing action. It targets the patriotic middle class of China, who strongly support domestic brands. The video has attracted a lot of attention on the Internet. He then uploaded another trolling apology video. In the video, he mimicked the official Huawei launch tone in response to Huawei’s protests.
Background: Huawei is often considered a patriotic brand due to its chip war with the US a few years ago, and brands are accused of using it as a marketing point.
Details of Maextro S800
The Maextro S800 is a large, luxurious sedan from Huawei and Jac. It will be available for sale this year and will be available in Huawei’s Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA) store. The car features two colours of body paint, 20-inch wheels with self-adjusting wheel caps, and rider sensors on the roof. A large sedan with dimensions of 5480/2000/1536 mm (length, width, height) and a wheelbase of 3370 mm.
The Maextro S800 uses BEV (battery electric vehicle) and EREV (expanded range electric vehicle) powertrain variants. The BEV variant is available in three electric motors (for 160 kW each) with a total output of 635 kW (852 hp). The EREV variant of this car uses a 390 kW (523 hp) dual motor 4WD and a 1.5 liter range extender as standard. There is also a tri-motor version with a peak power of 635 kW.
Source: Weibo
