A fatal traffic accident that occurred in the early morning of October 13th triggered public doubts about the safety of Xiaomi cars. In the past two days, Xiaomi Auto’s live broadcast room has been flooded with negative comments, and some anchors were even personally attacked. The Douyin account of Xiaomi founder Lei Jun has lost over 60,000 followers in the past two days and 300,000 followers in half a month.
Xiaomi Auto’s live broadcast room was violently attacked by the Internet
There is only one store left to broadcast live today
According to Blue Whale News, on October 13, multiple Xiaomi Auto live broadcast rooms encountered negative comments. Many netizens posted comments such as "Door handles can't be opened, garbage trucks, and green belt war gods" in the live broadcast room, and even made personal attacks on the anchors. In response to this, an anchor responded during the live broadcast: "We are just beating workers, please stop attacking."
Red Star Capital Bureau noticed that on the afternoon of October 14, only Xiaomi Auto Guangzhou Panyu store was live broadcasting on Douyin, and other Xiaomi Auto store accounts had suspended live broadcast. However, the comment areas of the latest videos of these accounts are also filled with voices questioning Xiaomi Auto.
Negative comments flooded the Xiaomi live broadcast room
In this only live broadcast room, there are still negative comments flooding the screen, and the same account is repeatedly posting negative comments. Some used this accident to attack its safety; some attacked Lei Jun; some questioned the appearance design of Xiaomi cars as plagiarizing Porsche; some also mentioned the small print marketing on Xiaomi posters...
It is worth mentioning that there are even a few comments attacking the anchor. The anchor of the live broadcast room did not show his face and simply introduced products and policies without any other content.
On October 14, Xiaomi Auto Sales told the Red Star Capital Bureau that it would not respond to the impact of this accident and that everything would be subject to official notifications.
Lost over 60,000 followers in 2 days
Lei Jun’s Douyin account lost 300,000 followers in half a month
As of now, neither Xiaomi Auto nor Lei Jun has responded or issued a statement on the accident.
The day before the accident (October 12), Lei Jun posted four consecutive Weibo posts, including promotion of the amethyst car color of Xiaomi YU7, a set of Xinjiang scenery photos taken by Xiaomi mobile phones, the progress of plateau road tests in Xinjiang, and the first Xiaomi employee car show. On the day of the accident, Lei Jun posted two more posts on Weibo, promoting the tender yellow car color and commenting on the YU7 car owner photography contest. On October 14, Lei Jun updated the promotional content about the Xinjiang plateau test and Xiaomi Mi 17 mobile phone.
The picture shows a screenshot of Lei Jun’s Weibo post
There are also a lot of negative comments in Lei Jun's comment area. According to Weibo, "Within 30 days, the blogger (Lei Jun) has blocked 17 users who made malicious comments." Many of the comments raised questions about the safety issues exposed by the accident, requiring Lei Jun to give an explanation. The focus of the dispute is why the door cannot be opened since the vehicle involved in the accident was not significantly deformed.
Regarding the continued silence of Xiaomi and Lei Jun, some netizens shouted: "It's already this time, and you still insist on promoting products, can't you pause for a while?" "It happens every time, and it will take you many days to solve it directly."
Some netizens called out Lei Jun for his response to the problem that the car door could not be opened.
Affected by the accident, Xiaomi Group (01810.HK) Hong Kong stocks plummeted after opening on October 13, falling more than 7% during the session and closing down 5.71%; on October 14, it closed down 0.94%.
Not long ago, Xiaomi collapsed due to "small print marketing". Lei Jun was questioned about excessive marketing, his personality collapsed, and the number of fans continued to decline. Gray Dolphin data shows that from September 15 to October 14, Lei Jun’s Douyin account lost 361,000 followers in the past 30 days. Since September 29, the number of Lei Jun’s Douyin fans has been decreasing every day, with a decrease of 301,000 in the last 15 days. On October 14, as of the press release of Red Star Capital Bureau, Lei Jun’s Douyin followers were 44.729 million, and he had lost more than 60,000 followers in two days.
Lei Jun’s Douyin account lost 300,000 followers in half a month