BYD used the ad to offer buyers up to €10,000 ($11,800) to those who bought a car and traded in a vehicle with a wet timing belt. That just happens to describe the timing system used in Stellantis’ PureTech engines, which run belts through a constant oil bath. These engines have been at the center of several recalls and warranty extensions linked to long-term reliability issues.
These puretech engines are pure trash, like most of these modern combustion engines that use all kinds of tricks to lower emissions, totally unreliable. I have a Peugeot but it’s the electric version.
The IAP ruled that these messages violated Italian advertising rules against defamation, misleading commercial communication, and unfair comparative advertising.
Good call by the Italian authorities, I admit the way BYD did it as a trade-in offer is pretty clever, but comparative advertising is near impossible to do legally in EU exactly for the reasons stated. It will almost always be unfair and misleading, as it focus on features that disfavor the competition. This can quickly become an issue of actual defamation.
On another note, Chinese car makers can apparently make deals with EU for lower tariffs if they promise to not sell their cars too cheap. But how does that work when they make attractive trade-in offers?
How is it defamation if it’s true?
It will almost always be unfair and misleading, as it focus on features that disfavor the competition.
But it’s neither unfair or misleading. Those belts are a known problem.
I think the rules are there to prevent a slippery slope. Ads, which I personally oppose as a whole, can always state positive thinks about the own brand.
The rules are there to protect a large corporation and keep them selling defective products to customers.
True. But BYD is also a very, very large corporation.
So if an ad were to make fun of how horrible Tesla’s Full Self Driving feature is, that would be unfair and misleading? As opposed to the pain simple truth?
You can do as you please as a private person. If you are BYD, VW or Ford one has to play by the rules of the market.
The question was how is it defamation, you’re giving a non-answer that’s nothing more than a blatant appeal to authority.
Well, I am not the IAP nor the original comment author. But as far as I understand the rules, every comparative advertisement, that is saying competitor X is bad instead of our product Y is good, has the same problem: X can easily say that the selected feature is just one random pick of a range of features. They may retaliate with some other fact. That may also be factual true, let’s say, BYD cars are build without union oversight.
And that starts a negative cycle. You can be in favour of that. It might be entertaining. But by the book that is not allowed to keep advertisement a little more civilized.
Whilst I’m not defending any advertisement at all, one can easily see what happens when it is allowed to talk about your enemies instead of what you provide. Just look at the logical end of this in form of the attack ads of the US political campaigns.
Obviously if it’s true it is not defamation what I wrote was:
This can quickly become an issue of actual defamation.
This can be by context, for instance only mentioning bad aspects or anecdotal evidence.
Yes, but the ruling stated that they violated defamation rules, which implies defamation did happen.
Stellantis’ PureTech engines, which run belts through a constant oil bath.
Ford did the same thing in European 1.0L EcoBoost and 2.0L EcoBlue engines and they all fail. This has been a known problem since 2007.
