Dirty Tactics: Is there a smear campaign against the green car battery brand?

We have seen our fair share of controversies in the auto industry. There have been brands that have filed for certain questionable claims to lower the prices of their vehicles or make their models more attractive. There have been controversies with certain words being taken out of context or sensationalized misquotes.

But one of the more rare occurrences is when a company engages the services of what can only be described as a troll army to drive a certain conversation on social media.

In the last few weeks and months, we have been noticing a rise of troll-style comments on our articles and posts. Actually, it's not just limited to AutoIndustriya; we've seen it in other outlets, vlogs, and Facebook feeds as well.

The topic: a smear campaign being focused on a certain green brand of car batteries. The comments come from fictitious and invented accounts that are obviously online trolls, and the claims are that the batteries explode or that they have experience with the batteries exploding.

While we cannot verify nor have we seen any such incidents as claimed by the fictitious accounts, what we do know is that a few years ago the green car battery brand held a shooting range event where the battery was shot at by members of the press. I was supposed to go, but my schedule didn’t permit. The result: the battery didn’t go boom. Make of that what you will.

This style isn’t new to us who have observed how politics has been going and how social media has been or is being twisted. In the automotive space, it’s not new either and it is quite obvious when brands engage troll armies online.

In the cases we spotted, usually the intent is to prop up the conversations about their brand and products in ways that would never have happened organically. I mean, who would randomly post a comment about how great the experience was when pawning your OR/CR on one of our reviews? If you have to pawn your pink slips, then you’re not a happy motorist.

There was even one time that an automobile distributor obviously engaged a troll army to post good comments about the design, performance, and vaguely European origin of their products. It was ridiculous, to say the least. I personally confirmed that with an insider in the company. Said insider found it very underhanded that their company engaged troll farms to “positivize” the brand’s image. It didn’t work, FYI. The brand is now gone.

As for who is funding this spurious online activity with the green car battery brand, we have our suspicions. Maybe they should stop the nonsense before we go digging any further. The answer is probably a car battery brand that stands to lose from the rise of a competitor. I’ll leave the guesswork to you.