China’s EV Makers Furious: How Dare Tesla Take Flight! Their Rival Turns Out to Be a Balloon Mock-Up

Elon Musk has really pushed the limits this time. Tesla's new Roadster 2 made a stunning debut. It can drive upside down like Spider-Man, launch into the air, flip over, and land safely. It left people across China stunned. China also wanted to create something similar, but lacked the capability, so it could only produce a balloon model to imitate it. Of course, BYD can jump too. It rose several inches, over 10 centimeters off the ground, and landed safely. This is the very best technology China's new automakers have to offer. While Tesla flips freely through the air, Chinese automaker NIO is desperately wiggling on the runway. Don't laugh at them. They're already trying their hardest. While Chinese EV makers pack their launch events with features, range claims, and talk of smart driving, Tesla has made a car fly. How are Chinese paid pro-CCP commenters and diehard nationalists supposed to take that? They call it Musk's malicious takeoff. Of course, the bosses of China's new automakers won't let anyone out-talk them. Just listen to NIO boss William Li. Everything Tesla has, I have too. Everything they can do, I can do. And they can't do what I can. What's the big deal? It's a matter of mindset. You don't need to waste time convincing people who don't believe in you. The chairman of Huawei's consumer business, Richard Yu, said That company whose name starts with T, you all know it's an American company, we're still much better than they are. Don't laugh at them. Far ahead, far ahead. We're still leading, more than 50% ahead of our rivals. We compared Tesla's FSD with our ADS, Advanced Driver Assistance System. We said we're confident we can beat the competition. Now let's hear from a more rational user in mainland China. I woke up and the entire auto industry was stunned. Tesla was flying. Tesla has redefined where the industry is headed. What are those cars with fridges, TVs, giant sofas, and even toilets supposed to do now? One company studies technology, the other studies consumers. Tell me, how do you even compare them? Another stunned user even came up with a comeback for Huawei. 昨天马斯克的飞车 Musk's flying car has shocked the world. I watched the video carefully. First, there's no fine print. Second, this isn't just some technology still in development. Even so, I'm still not optimistic. Why? Because it's hard to copy. Oh no, mainly because there aren't many practical uses, right? Who wants a car flying around and bouncing up and down all day? You won't trust a guy who builds rockets. Instead, you trust a company that sells phones and builds cell towers. Are you out of your mind? Some say this feature has no practical value. Picture this. You're stopped at a red light, and the car behind you can't brake in time. Now you can dodge it. If the car beside you starts ejecting its battery, you can dodge that too. Now imagine something more extreme. The moment your car goes off a cliff, you can take off. You get another chance to live. One user quickly offered some reassurance to calm the anger and disappointment. About Tesla's new supercar that can take off from a standstill, Chinese users don't need to argue about it. Good or bad, this car has nothing to do with Chinese consumers. Even if China could build a car with these features, it wouldn't be allowed. Once Tesla starts mass production, it won't be allowed to sell this car in China either. Why exactly? I found the answer in the comments. One user said, imagine a Chinese driver approaching a checkpoint on the way into Beijing. Press a button and the car jumps right over it. Reach a highway toll booth, press a button and jump over that too. Drive along Chang'an Avenue, press a button and jump straight into the Imperial Palace. My goodness, could they stand that? China won't even let you fly drones. Would they let you fly a car? Who do you think you are? You're just an ordinary citizen and you want to go wherever you please what are you thinking? Wash up and go to bed. One user mocked the Chinese brand's dancing car. Watch this video first. I wonder if Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has seen it. Do you think Musk borrowed Xiaomi's idea to make this flying car? Think about it. First it sways then it jumps. Isn't that the logic? Even as users praised Tesla they kept taking jabs at China's new automakers. This isn't AI. It's actual footage from Tesla's launch event. Isn't this a little unfair? How are your competitors supposed to keep up? And the guy who said he was everything Tesla has, why don't you try copying this? Forget about everything else. How about you make a car hover motionless in midair? Oh, it's flashy but impractical. Fair point. It hovers and flips like that. Won't your coffee spill everywhere? You can't sip your coffee elegantly anymore. That's true. Personally, I think Huawei cars are the best. They're different from other cars. You can find crash videos and photos of other cars online. But photos of Huawei crash cars? You can't find them, can you? Have you ever found photos or videos of those crashes? That's why Huawei cars are the best. You've all seen the Tesla news, right? After watching it, I had just one thought. Here in China, everyone online is still arguing endlessly about brakes. Meanwhile, cars overseas can already fly. Damn, what kind of world is this? Why has the reaction been so strong? Huawei has been making headlines too. Three brake pedals and its car snapped underfoot, yet the company emerged unscathed. It even brought one of China's leading car review platforms to heel. As the saying goes, comparisons can be painful. First, let's see how Tesla made a car fly, then we'll look at what has been keeping Huawei busy. According to a technical white paper jointly released by SpaceX and Tesla, the car has an all-new high-pressure gas propulsion system. At its core, all four carbon fiber pressure vessels. Their internal operating pressure is kept at a staggering 70 megapascals, or about 10,000 pounds per square inch. The tank uses an outer layer of aerospace grade T-1000 high-modulus carbon fiber. Their burst pressure safety margin exceeds 2.5 times the operating pressure. After 100,000 extra pressurizations and depressurization cycles, microscopic damage remains below 0.1%. Ten all-metal miniature supersonic DeLaval nozzles are positioned around the car. As the high-pressure gases passes through their narrowing and widening sections, it accelerates within microseconds into jets exceeding Mach 1.5. A single pulse produces up to 30,000 newtons of reaction thrust. That is an adjustable burst of force equivalent to roughly 6,600 pounds. Acting on a lightweight sports car weighing about 4,000 pounds, the resulting brief upward acceleration offsets gravity at Earth's surface. With no external mechanical support, the car can briefly hover under control a few inches above the ground. you could call that actual flight. It also accelerates from zero to 60 miles per hour in under one second. Every specification seems to challenge the limits of physics. Musk put it this way, Tesla does not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great. Tesla also posted on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, that it has no rush-to-market cars and no franchise dealerships. Sales, customer service, deliveries, and technicians are all in-house. Everything is directly operated. Users said Tesla appeared to be talking about itself, but every point struck at Huawei's weaknesses. These are all Huawei's fatal flaws. It seems even Tesla couldn't stand watching anymore and decided to say it openly. So what has happened to Huawei, the company that has long treated Tesla as its top rival and called itself the backbone of China. At a closed test track, three safety critical brake pedals snapped underfoot in a Huawei ultra-luxury flagship car. High-definition cameras recorded it all. The car's pre-sale price was over 1 million yuan. After the incident, three Chinese agencies announced a joint investigation on October 15, 2026. They were the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Cyberspace administration of China and the state administration for market regulation. The investigation concerns broken brake pedal brackets in the Maxtro V800, a high-end new energy vehicle developed by Huawei and GAC Motors. In a normal modern business environment, this could be disastrous for any automaker. It could face recalls, a production shutdown, or even criminal prosecution. Strangely, Huawei offered no apology to buyers who had paid deposits of 40,000 yuan. It made no humble public admission of fault either. Instead, it cast itself as a deeply wronged victim. Richard Yu posted an odd message on WeChat Moments, the app's social feed. Justice may be delayed, but it will never be absent. Those who understood the message knew it was Huawei's victory speech. It had won again. It had crushed Dong Che Di, a well-connected car review platform that exposed the incident. Then came the familiar routine. The propaganda machine went into overdrive. A straightforward case involving a defective part and a material strength test became a vast political conspiracy. Foreign forces are pulling the strings, and the review organization is deliberately smearing the pride of our national industry. Sharp-eyed users noticed what happened next. Dong Che Di's official account had clearly documented the entire series of Huawei brake pedal failures, yet in a remarkably short time, many testing videos and detailed teardown reports posted after July 26th were deleted or hidden from public view. Dong Che Di is no small player. It has powerful finance backing. And, even so, it came up short against Huawei, a company aligned with the CCP. That produced an unusual scene. Huawei had thrown everything into winning the brake pedal scandal, only for Tesla to take flight at that very moment. Huawei had to fight a two-front war. It was struggling to keep up. Users began picking up where Dong Che Di left off, challenging Huawei and exposing its underhanded tactics. Huawei and its Harmony OS can actually block content and decide what you can and can't see. Amazing, isn't it? Here's a Huawei phone and an ordinary iPhone. Look at the difference. The same Douyin account posted two videos at the same time. One critical video is missing on the Huawei phone. Huawei simply won't let you see it. What kind of offense is manipulating public opinion? I think we need to discuss that. You all said Huawei built Harmony OS to compete with Apple's and Google's operating systems. Now it looks like it built a cage and put some not-so-smart people inside. From now on, you'll only see what they want you to see. Anything they don't want you to see will disappear. If this is confirmed, it's no small offense, my friend. You're outright manipulating public opinion. Did anyone approve that? The commenter said Huawei may once have been seen as simply making poor quality products. Now, he argued, its conduct had proved outrageously bad. Even a leading platform like Dongchedi has been bought to heal and no way to fight back. If an ordinary owner's brakes failed on a highway, how could that owner take on Huawei's legal team? In his view, this is the justice Huawei wants. However bad the product, everyone must praise it. If a pedal breaks, blame the tester. Anyone who questions the company faces an internet-wide ban, with even traces of their presence erased. Observers believe Huawei narrowly escaped this major fiasco, only to be hit hard by Tesla. Its position is now precarious. Many users who once stayed silent have finally had enough and are speaking out. They say paid pro-CCP commentators and diehard nationalists have always mocked Musk for boasting. Yet one seemingly impossible promise after another is becoming reality. That sports car with SpaceX thrusters can hover under control a few inches above the ground. That is not because a powerful government agency backed Musk, nor did the federal government issue an official directive ordering every American to buy one. He earned consumers' respect around the world through real-market competition, without special protection. He endured countless failures and rounds of trial and error, backed by relentless investment and effort. Musk has shown the world that a company's real advantage and path forward lie in daring to push engineering into territory and limits humanity has never reached. Why can SpaceX rockets land vertically at sea? Because the company dares to live stream every launch and every explosion to hundreds of millions worldwide. All its test data is made public. When a rocket explodes, it accepts responsibility, identifies flaws in the software and piping and fixes them. No lawmaker dares cover up Musk's mistakes and failures. No regulator dares jail journalists for criticizing him. Now, compare that with Musk's broken brake pedal arm and the troubling mechanics behind it. Cross-sectional images taken at the scene clearly show extremely cheap injection-molded nylon. Its maximum load capacity is inherently inconsistent. A material rated at 115 megapascals was made to withstand a panic braking stress of 215 megapascals. Its safety margin went straight into negative territory. Ultimately, a pedal made from this material should never be in a luxury car costing over 1 million yuan. So, where should a pedal like this belong? Let's bring out the lineup. First is a knockoff that Chinese users jokingly call the Bentley Troublemaker, priced at 19,800 yuan. Next comes the Maserati Daddy, at 19,900 yuan. Then, the Brilliant's Precious Donkey at around 21,800 yuan. Here's the Mercedes' Little G at about 19,800 yuan. And look at this dazzling Bugatti Bug priced at 21,000 yuan. Users finally understood. So this is Huawei's standard, and this is where its cars really belong. Instead of blaming the bosses of China's new automakers, doesn't the real problem lie with Huawei's buyers? There are so many knock-off luxury cars with brake pedal arms in Huawei's class, yet buyers pass them up and spend the price of an entire knock-off car on a pedal that snaps underfoot. After that, a plastic brake system for a Huawei luxury car could cost far more than a whole knock-off vehicle. Tesla has taken to the skies. Huawei has spent so much silencing critics that it has burned through even its brake arm material budget, and then some. At this critical moment, Musk has served as a foil to Huawei.