Text/Zhu Qin
Recently, the "chip reduction" incident of Euler good cat has been put on the cusp of the storm, and many consumers have accused Euler of "false propaganda". At present, according to the latest official statement, although it is not deliberately deceived, there are indeed inaccurate statements in the promotion, causing trouble to consumers. In particular, euler's official website promotes the coffee intelligent platform and chip that are not equipped with current products.
In the "inner-" automotive industry, Euler's "good cats" don't seem to be a column.
As we all know, since the end of last year, due to the impact of the epidemic, there has been a shortage of chips in the automotive industry. The growth rate of the entire automobile industry due to lack of core production and sales has declined significantly. According to caucus forecasts, the automotive industry will sell 2.47 million units in November, down 10.8% year-on-year. Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of the China Automobile Association, said that although the current chip still cannot fully meet the production needs, compared with the "lack of core" in July and August, the chip shortage problem has been alleviated month by month.
On the one hand, there is "no rice under the pot", and on the other hand, it needs to maintain market share. Obviously, car companies are caught in a dilemma.
"Incorrect version" is not an isolated case
"ATD Han was initially advertised as the first model equipped with 5G, and I purchased the Han DM Premium Version on November 19, 2020, and the actual model is 4G." A bydie Han car owner complained on the car quality network complaint platform.
According to the consumer, the new car delivered last year used an MSM8953 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625) chip, which is a 4G chip, and the phenomenon of the car machine system caton is very obvious when it is used. In April this year, BYD produced a new car, using Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chip, also a 4G chip, but the fluency of the car system has been significantly improved. In August this year, the car machine system used the Snapdragon 690 chip without the vehicle modification, which is a new 5G chip from Qualcomm in mid-2020. As the first owner to buy, the car mentioned is obviously different from the chip configuration of the new car produced this year, and it is not the Huawei 5G car machine advertised when it was launched.
According to public information, in June last year, many media about BYD Han's promotional content mentioned that "Han will be the world's first mass production model equipped with Huawei's 5G technology", and according to BYD officials, Huawei's 5G technology will be applied to in-vehicle intelligent entertainment systems and DiPilot intelligent driving assistance systems.
In addition, the official propaganda poster released by BYD also typed the words "Huawei 5G". However, from the content of the complaint consumer, the new car delivered to the user when BYD Han was listed last year was not Huawei's 5G configuration, which is obviously inconsistent with the advertised configuration.
On the car quality network, there are many similar complaints, most of which are labeled with "sales fraud" and "not in line with publicity".
At present, the main requirement of this part of the consumer is "to ask BYD to replace my 4G old car machine with the 5G car machine that was originally advertised."
Obviously, the experience of BYD owners and the experience of Euler's good cat owners have similarities. The brand's promotional content at the beginning of the launch of the new product is not in line with the actual delivery of the product to the user.
In addition to BYD, the problem of "goods not in the right version" also exists on Chery Jietu X70 PLUS.
According to some Jietu car owners on the car quality network, at the Jietu X70 PLUS listing conference, the official clearly stated that the high-end version of jietu X70 PLUS is directly equipped with laser headlights, and it is promoted that this model is also equipped with APA automatic parking system, in-car live object detection, face recognition dangerous action detection, Tencent Wutong car connection system, on-board WeChat and other configurations. However, many car owners found that after picking up the car, the high-end model Jietu X70 PLUS day version purchased, the actual car was not equipped with the advertised laser headlights, automatic parking, live object detection in the car, on-board WeChat and other configurations.
In May this year, the official response of Jietu said: "After investigation, it was found that due to the negligence of the staff, the laser headlight configuration was incorrectly checked in the remarks column of the "Motor Vehicle Factory Certificate" of the daily version of the model purchased by individual users, which caused confusion and misunderstanding to some users. "And promised that it will install laser headlights for users with wrong certificates of conformity free of charge or give users corresponding cost compensation."
In response to Jietu, some consumers said that "the conference hyped up these functions, and employees made mistakes and were still cheating." Another consumer said, "Seeing that the advertising of the day version model is better than the ground version model, I only added more than ten thousand yuan to choose the day version, as a high-end model, the car produced is led headlights." The real car is different from the advertisement, which is completely deceiving consumers. ”
According to reports, a similar phenomenon of reduction also exists on the Jetto X90, and it is reported that last year's 2020 Chery Jetto X90 new car release explicitly mentioned that the car is equipped with 12 speakers, and there are only 6 actual cars.
Laser headlights, automatic parking, in-vehicle cargo monitoring and other functions seem to require the corresponding chip hardware support, is the jietu allocation reduction related to the chip shortage?
At present, the official did not give a clear reply, but left an official customer service phone on the complaint platform to let users feedback the problem through the phone. For the manufacturer's response, some car owners said that "complaints are not replied to."
In addition to the problem of reduced allocation, in the rapid development of electrification and intelligent technology, mileage and automatic driving have also become the hardest hit areas for many car companies to exaggerate and publicize.
Last year, Tesla was hit by a number of "emergency response vehicle" collisions, which made Tesla's Autopilot automatic driving assist system the focus of controversy. In recent years, Musk has been declaring that Tesla cars are close to full self-driving. In the promotion of new cars, automatic driving has also become the focus of Tesla's publicity. But many people believe that Tesla's automatic assisted driving system has not yet reached L5 level, so Tesla is false propaganda.
Under the leadership of Tesla, in the past two years, domestic car companies have also adopted the vocabulary of automatic driving in the promotion of intelligent assisted driving technology, and for a time", "advanced publicity" and "exaggerated publicity" have become the mainstream. However, in fact, the current intelligent driving assistance technology is still in the L2 stage, and individual car companies have reached the L3 level, far from reaching the L5 level of technology, and it is impossible to achieve L5 level mass production.
In addition, in the field of electrification, 1,000 kilometers of endurance has also become a technical highlight that many car companies are vying to promote. However, at present, there are only a few pure electric mass production vehicles that can reach 1,000 kilometers. At the same time, the virtual mileage is a common trick used by many car companies.
Terminal sales mislead consumers
In addition to the discrepancy between the real car and the publicity, at the moment when the lack of core leads to a sharp decline in production, the difficulty of picking up the car has also become a new problem encountered by consumers in the process of car purchase.
"Mr. Zhao, please help me urge the car!" After the deposit was paid on September 29, the sales said that it would be delivered for about two months, and now it has been more than three months, or there is no news! And I paid the intention money on January 22 before the release of the Song DMI model, but the problem of the intermediate charging pile was delayed. Under the Weibo of Zhao Changjiang, who was the general manager of BYD Automobile Sales Company, a netizen asked for help.
Under Zhao Changjiang's Weibo, there are still many netizens who "urge the car".
Another netizen reflected: "When booking a car, I said that I could pick up the car at the end of December, and I booked a car, and now I said that I didn't say it, I have to wait for 5 months, so the service attitude of the rebel is too disappointing!" ”
Queuing up to pick up a car, or even a mark-up, is not uncommon in this year's car market. In addition to the fact that some popular models cannot keep up with the production capacity due to too many orders, many models with sales data that are not too high also have a tight supply of vehicles.
Obviously, the problem of difficulty in lifting cars is mainly because of the shortage of chips that lead to the decline in production capacity of car companies. For example, Great Wall Motor's production in November this year was 124,500 units, down 14.83% year-on-year; SAIC Motor's vehicle production in November was 605,378 units, down 8.22% year-on-year. In addition, the problem of capacity decline caused by lack of cores is not unique in China. According to public information, Volvo's global car production in the third quarter of 2021 decreased by about 50,000 units, and Toyota Motor's global car production in October fell by about 26% year-on-year.
As a common problem faced by the entire industry, the difficulty of picking up cars has also become a common problem encountered by consumers of other automobile brands.
"The booking has been full a month, the manufacturer received more than 10,000 orders before the listing, but the delay in scheduling, the whole month 4S shop no car delivery, seriously affecting the customer's car demand, and even the estimated time for picking up the car is not, endlessly waiting!" What is the difference between this and illegal fundraising? ”
Labeled "illegal fundraising" by consumers is the Geely Geometry brand of geometry EX3 Kung Fu Niu, the car was officially listed on November 14 this year, according to public information, the new car pre-sale to the official listing of more than 11,000 orders, is considered to be listed that the popularity.
However, from the content of the above consumer complaints, it can be seen that it is easy to order but difficult to pick up the car. What makes it unacceptable to many consumers who have booked a new car is that "4S stores cannot provide accurate delivery times".
Some users who order zero-run cars also experience similar problems.
"I promised to deliver the vehicle in about a month, and the agreement also clearly stated that the vehicle would be delivered within three months, otherwise the compensation would be doubled." The consumer who complained on a complaint platform said that he signed a car purchase agreement with Zero Run on September 11 this year, and paid a deposit of 5,000 yuan at that time, but until now (three months immediately) has not been scheduled, and the manufacturer has not given any reply.
Go on the scamp?
From the information of many parties, it can be seen that at present, there are more and more incidents of terminal dealers in various places that delay the pick-up of the car and cannot pick up the car according to the contract. However, this is not the worst encounter. Some consumers who have subscribed to Changan Benben will have to pay another fee to pick up the car.
According to media reports, Ms. Wang, who ordered the Changan Benben E-Star 2020 Xinyue version in July this year, did not mention the car in the agreed delivery time on October 10, and then the sales staff said that "you need to add 5,000 yuan to buy a service package to pick up the car next week, if you don't add it, you can only wait for infinity." ”
The same as Ms. Wang encountered many car owners, waiting for a long time and indefinitely, so that many Changan Ben order users began to protect their rights. Some consumers believe that "the reason for the delay in picking up the car is that the manufacturer has not scheduled production at all, because the low-cost model manufacturers cannot make money, and now let the consumers who have booked the higher price to increase the configuration of the model, which is the manufacturer's desire to reduce losses." ”
For consumer speculation, Changan Automobile did not give a positive reply. However, according to public information, in early November, Changan New Energy Automobile officially issued a notice that Series models such as Ben Ben E-Star and Ben Ben E-Star National Edition stopped receiving orders, and Changan Ben Ben will launch a new version in the later period.
Recently, due to the collective rights protection of some consumers who did not pick up the car, the riders in the "rights protection group of Changan Benben" were arranged to pick up the car one after another. Changan officials also issued an announcement saying, "In order to ensure that customers who order old models can pick up the car as soon as possible, the manufacturer's production arrangement for the old model is much larger than the new model." ”
Judging from the current situation, under the pressure of public opinion, Changan Automobile finally made concessions. But for users who were eager to pick up the car before, the original 4S shop defaulted on the delay in delivery, but finally it was their own price increase to mention the car, such a car purchase experience is obviously not very good.
Editor's Note:
The shortage of chips caused by the epidemic originally belonged to the "force majeure factor", but in various strange situations such as the "wrong version of the goods" of the new car, the misleading purchase of the sale, and the "coaxing" of the transaction price by the manufacturer or terminal sales store, the human factor has dominated. Some manufacturers attribute the problem to the lack of communication between the two sides, some manufacturers believe that consumers misunderstand, and some manufacturers push the responsibility to the terminal salesman, although the reasons and explanations are diverse, but they all leave consumers with a bad car buying experience. For such a service, whether it will affect the influence of the brand in the future may only be revealed after a period of time.