A seven-year-old girl in China who reached out to Elon Musk on X to report a bug in Tesla’s cars and unexpectedly received a response from the world’s richest man has delighted mainland social media.
The story began to unfold on July 1 when someone using the handle “DriveGreenLiveGreen” posted a video on X which was titled “Molly decided to report an important bug to Mr Musk” and tagged the tech billionaire.
In the video, a girl called Molly from Beijing draws attention to a discrepancy she discovered in the drawing function on Tesla’s touch-screen facility and expressed her hope that Musk would address it.
She said: “Hello Mr Musk, I have a question for your car. When I draw a picture, sometimes it will disappear like this.”
Demonstrating the problem, she draws on the screen and shows how new strokes on the touch-screen automatically cause previous ones to disappear.
Molly then directly asks Musk: “Do you see it? Can you fix it? Thank you.”
To the surprise of many, Musk responded to her enquiry the same day, saying: “Sure.”
In an interview with Tide News, Molly’s mother, surnamed Yao, explained how her daughter discovered the glitch.
“She was drawing by the roadside and said ‘I want to show Mr Musk how it disappears’. When I told her yesterday that Musk had replied she was happy,” said Yao.
The girl’s mother said that her daughter attended a bilingual kindergarten in Beijing from the age of three, so her English was quite fluent.
“I simply wanted to improve her communication skills. I didn’t expect it to be reposted by other viewers and go viral on X, or for Musk to actually reply,” Yao said.
“She taught me a lesson too. Some things seem very far away, but if you dare to try and express yourself, unexpected results can happen. It was a big inspiration for me,” Molly’s mother added.
The video quickly went viral, amassing more than 1.1 million views on X, and much praise for the seven-year-old on mainland social media.
One online observer said: “Molly is so confident, brave and impressive for speaking her mind.”
“Who can resist this little cute Molly?” said another.
While a third person chimed in: “Ha ha, Musk must wish he had such a cute daughter.”
“If Musk had replied in Chinese, it would have been epic,” wrote someone else.
It is not the first time Musk has engaged with Chinese people online.
In December 2021, a video featuring a Chinese man who looked strikingly similar to Musk and was standing beside a Tesla car speaking fluent Chinese went viral on mainland social media and X.
The man was dubbed Ma Yilong, or “Elon Musk’s Chinese doppelganger”.
In response, Musk humorously responded on X: “Maybe I’m partly Chinese.”
