In a 100-kilometer emergency braking test conducted by a social media account named Dongchedi, the brake pedal brackets of three brand-new Zunjie V800s broke successively.
Once the video was released, what car owners wanted to ask most was: Is this brake really sturdy, or can it be stepped on and broken?
Zunjie's response, however, was a string of codes: GB 21670-2025, GB 7258-2026, QC/T 788-2018. It stated that the braking system was developed and verified “in accordance with requirements higher than national standards and industry standards,” that the test was an “non-standard extreme test condition,” and that the next step would be to optimize component design and provide free upgrades for users who had already taken delivery.
The question was “Is it sturdy or not,” and the answer was “We are compliant.” The distance between the public and this company is precisely what lies between this question and answer.
To be fair, such responses are not isolated incidents. In recent years, when companies face quality doubts, their first reaction has often been the same set of rhetoric: product safety is not an issue, all indicators meet standards, and individual cases are due to extreme usage scenarios. The words are watertight, but they never answer the question you asked.
But do companies really not know how to speak human language? Look at how they talk when selling cars. At the launch of the Zunjie S800, the line on stage, “Zunjie, a super-luxury brand belonging to Chinese people, has arrived,” made the whole audience's blood boil; when the flagship MPV of the era was launched in August this year, they boasted without reservation, “This will definitely become the world's top MPV”; not to mention the slogan repeatedly printed at every press conference – “Safety is the greatest luxury,” as if the word “safety” was being shouted into everyone’s hearts.
When selling cars, they use understandable plain language, as if they would break down every part and explain it to you; when accidents happen, their tone shifts, and it all becomes “higher than national and industry standards” and “non-standard extreme conditions.” The same group of people, two faces, the change is not in vocabulary, but in mindset.
Why don't they want to speak human language? Because human language carries weight. Saying “My car is very safe, the brake pedal cannot be broken” means taking responsibility; saying “We are higher than national and industry standards” allows for exemption from liability. Sales talk uses human language to get you to pay, with a transaction behind the promise; crisis response uses official language to shirk responsibility, with risk behind the promise. On one hand, the car price is hundreds of thousands of yuan, and on the other, there is the potential compensation in case of an accident. Companies calculate this equation more clearly than anyone.
But the market is also calculating this for you. “Meeting standards” does not earn a word of “drive with peace of mind.”
The Consumer Rights Protection Law clearly states: Operators shall provide true and clear answers to consumers' inquiries about the quality of goods or services they provide. This brake pedal didn't just break the bracket, it also broke a legal obligation to respond.
The public doesn't buy it, often not because of the incident itself, but because of the attitude in the response. The more you use “extreme conditions” and “non-standard testing” as a fallback, the more it seems like you are covering something up or evading something. On the brake pedal, consumers don't want a disclaimer, but someone who can pat their chest and say, “It’s safe enough.”
Human language carries so much weight that some companies dare not speak it, or even know how to speak it anymore. But the heavier it is, the more it needs to be spoken, because it is the foundation of trust.
