Which company failed with translation services?

Tesla Motors, Inc is an automotive production company who are famous for being the biggest car manufactures that produce solely fully electronic road-worthy cars. The company was fittingly named after the Serbian-American engineer Nikola Tesla whose ideas are now seen ahead of his time as he advocated the likes of wireless technology and electrical use. The now owner and CEO of the electric car manufacturers is South African born, Canadian-American business mogul and innovator, the one and only Elon Musk who had previous successes most notably with X.com (PayPal) and SpaceX, which aims to find a sustainable habitat for humans outside of Earth. Since the company’s inception in 2003 it has seen its fair shares of ups and downs over the years from being heralded as the saviour of the ozone layer as well as controversies ranging from the reliability of the electric cars batteries especially in cold weather to their website being compromised. But who knew that a translation error or rather the lack of accurate translation services would affect them?

This comes after the news that on 2^nd August a 32 year old man from Beijing named Luo Zhen who had recently purchased a Model S had a minor accident with a parked car because he had been told and shown by the sales manager who sold him the car that the Model S was a self-driving car and that he could drive with no hands. Lou took his eyes off the road and hands off the wheel which resulted in the crash. Lou criticised the sales tactic stating that “They did not clarify the risks” and “It can easily mislead people to overuse the function.” The accident resulted in no injuries with only a scratch to the Model S. But Tesla has reacted quickly though with a fast translation alteration.

The original Mandarin translation had read the car was had a ‘self-driving system’ which has now been changed to a ‘driver-assistance system’ to clear up the confusion. Gary Tao, Tesla’s Beijing spokesman aimed a statement on their website towards this incident to clear it all up. Tao explained “We hope to clarify that it is a driving-assisting function and hope people can use it in a correct way,” he also said he did not know about Lou’s test drive. All in all, this incident should not disrupt Tesla’s innovation in which many see them as the future of automobiles.

Whether it’s bad localisation services or just a simple error what are your thoughts on this miscommunication?