Xpeng's 'Old Geezer' Slur Sparks a Marketing Backlash It Can't Shake
A single slang word has cost Xpeng more than a week of bad press. The Guangzhou-based electric-car maker found itself at the centre of an online storm after a product manager used “laodeng” — roughly “old geezer” or “old fart” — in a public exchange, a term young Chinese internet users toss around casually but which lands very differently when it comes from a company selling cars that cost tens of thousands of yuan.
The apology came quickly. The product manager said sorry, and by the usual rhythm of Chinese internet scandals the matter should have faded within days. It did not. A senior executive’s response was read as defensive and combative, and that reaction, rather than the original slip, is what kept the topic alive across social platforms for days afterwards.
Why it matters is that Xpeng’s buyers are not teenagers. China’s electric-vehicle market has matured fast, and the people writing cheques for a mid-priced smart EV skew older than the marketing teams courting them. Many are family buyers in their thirties and forties, often buying their first or second car, often with parents contributing to the decision. A brand that sounds like it is sneering at age is sneering at its own customer base.
The deeper problem is a structural one across China’s car industry. EV makers are locked in a brutal price war, launching a wave of new models and fighting for attention on short-video feeds. Marketing teams skew young, are rewarded for memes and virality, and are measured on engagement rather than on how a line reads to a 45-year-old buyer in a showroom. Youthful tone is a strategy; contempt is an accident, and the line between them is thin.
Xpeng is not the only carmaker learning this. Chinese auto marketing has grown louder and more personality-driven as brands try to break out of a crowded field where specifications converge and price gaps narrow. Founders and executives have become influencers in their own right, posting directly to millions of followers — which means a personal retort is no longer a private email but a public statement of corporate attitude.
There is a commercial context too. Xpeng has been reshaping its product line and organisation, and has had its own internal turbulence over product leadership. In a market where buyers compare five or six near-identical models in a single afternoon, trust and tone are among the few things that still differentiate. An apology that is followed by a fight reads to consumers as a company that has not actually decided what it thinks of them.
The likely fix is unglamorous: tighter review of public-facing language, clearer rules on who speaks for the brand, and marketing that treats age as a spectrum rather than a punchline. Chinese car buyers are famously well-informed and quick to punish perceived arrogance; several brands have discovered that a viral insult travels further than any advertisement.
What to watch next is whether Xpeng changes personnel, messaging or both, and whether rival carmakers quietly rewrite their own social-media playbooks. The episode will be judged not by the apology but by the next campaign aimed at families.