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#特斯拉中国上架闪电酒瓶#

On Thursday, Tesla China posted a new product on its website — empty glass bottles in the shape of lightning bolts that were designed to hold tequila. These empty bottles were priced at 779 yuan ($118). By Monday morning, less than four days after they went on sale, Tesla’s customer services stated that the bottles had already sold out.

What’s the story?

The story behind the carmaker’s detour into selling empty bottles that originally would have contained alcohol began on April 1, 2018, when Elon Musk posted an April Fool’s joke saying that he had been found “passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by ‘Teslaquilla’ bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks.”

Just over two years later, in November 2020, Tesla then started selling tequila in lightning bolt shaped bottles describing the drink as a “premium 100% de agave tequila añejo aged in French oak barrels, featuring a dry fruit and light vanilla nose with a balanced cinnamon pepper finish.” The bottles and alcohol quickly became collector’s items and sold out within hours. The next day, a secondary market in “empty bottles” took off in earnest, with bottles selling for as much as $1,000 each. There is some suspicion as to whether they were really empty or they were only described as such to conform to eBay regulations, which do not allow for the resale of alcohol on its platform.

Possibly learning from the American experience that the bottles didn’t even need to have alcohol in them to be sought-after collectors’ items, Tesla has now taken to selling empty 750-milliliter lightning bolt-shaped liquor bottles in China. Despite the fact they were empty and cost over $100, the bottles sold out in days. The electric car company assured eshop customers that stocks would be replenished and promised that other non-car products would hit the shelves soon.

What are people saying online?

On Chinese social media, readers saw in the story the coming of a new era of “high-end consumption, in which the pursuit of quality is everything.” Some said that selling out so fast showed how rich China had become.

However others were less positive. One Weibo reader made reference to an old Chinese saying, with “you know what they say about ‘sniffing foreigners’ farts and calling them sweet.”

Another wondered if the booze had evaporated on its journey across the Pacific from California. “When it launched in the U.S., even empty bottles sold secondhand for $1,000. When it gets to China, they do away with the alcohol altogether. Do they think that really captures the essence of the market?”

Many viewers recognized that the story showed, “The power of belief among spiritual shareholders,” referring to Tesla’s seemingly unassailable hold on China’s electric car aspirations.

And one Weibo user felt left out, “On first glance, 779 yuan for a tequila bottle is a lot; on second glance, I can’t even get a look in.”

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