A few days ago, the complaint about the false publicity of the Euler good cat model car machine chip has aroused the attention of the media and regulatory authorities, on December 7, CCTV financial network reported that the relevant person in charge of Euler Automobile also conducted a telephone interview, and the relevant person in charge of Euler Automobile said that "in response to the problem of Euler good cat chip to the majority of users, deeply apologize", promised to seriously investigate the ins and outs, properly handle related matters, and give consumers a satisfactory answer. So, can the owner of Euler Good Cat claim "one refund and three losses" in accordance with the provisions of Article 55 of the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law of the People's Republic of China? What penalties may the relevant automakers and sellers face?
"One refund for three" is premised on constituting fraud
First, at the level of civil liability, according to Article 55 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, "where a business operator provides goods or services fraudulently, it shall increase the compensation for the losses suffered by the consumer in accordance with the requirements of the consumer, and the amount of the increased compensation shall be three times the price of the goods purchased by the consumer or the cost of receiving the service; if the amount of additional compensation is less than 500 yuan, it shall be 500 yuan." Where the law provides otherwise, follow those provisions". From the perspective of this provision, the provision of "one refund and three compensation" is punitive damages, which is applicable to more serious fraudulent acts, generally manifested as shoddy, false, adulterated and other fraudulent behaviors, that is, the secondary products are turned into good products through forgery and alteration, and sold at the price of good products to obtain illegal benefits.
On the official promotional page and official website, the Euler Good Cat model declares that "using Qualcomm Qualcomm's professional in-vehicle intelligent service platform, it has 9 Kryo CPU processing cores, 1 Qualcomm Adreno 640GPU graphics processor and 1 good performance Hexagon 6 DSP digital signal processor..." Similar promotional statements are obviously inconsistent with the Intel Atom Processor A3940 chip actually equipped with the vehicle. However, whether such false publicity constitutes fraud also needs to be combined with the provisions of Article 148 of the Civil Code: "If one party fraudulently causes the other party to carry out a civil juristic act against its true intentions, the defrauded party has the right to request the people's court or arbitration institution to revoke it." "The following four conditions must be met to constitute fraud: one is the intent to commit fraud, the second is fraudulent conduct, the third is the misperception that arises from fraud, and the fourth is the expression of intent due to error.
Specific to the issue of euler good cat chip, euler good cat model in the official publicity page and the official website for the vehicle car machine chip publicity is obviously false propaganda, and as a host manufacturer, the car manufacturer should be very clear about the vehicle actually equipped with the vehicle chip is very clear, but still in the official publicity page and the official website made a publicity that is inconsistent with the actual product, obviously is a deliberate fraud, and consumers because of the false publicity of the car manufacturer and have a wrong understanding, It is believed that the Euler good cat model is equipped with the "Qualcomm Qualcomm 8-core chip" in the publicity, and the misunderstanding generated by this is certain, but starting from the cognitive ability and consumer psychology of the general consumer, the model and performance of the vehicle and machine chip will affect the consumer's purchase choice to a certain extent, but to what extent can different models of car chip affect the normal use of the vehicle, which is enough to make consumers make a wrong expression of meaning?
Chip "stealing beams and changing columns" may lead consumers to postpone making purchase decisions
With the rapid development of the automobile industry, "chip" has become a very critical factor in determining the comprehensive competitiveness of a car, euler good cat model before the promotion of the "Qualcomm Qualcomm professional vehicle processing chip", referring to qualcomm 8155 chip, the chip is the world's first mass-produced 7nm process car machine chip, the entire chip AI computing power can reach 8TOPS, the shipment price is about 100 US dollars. The Intel Atom Processor A3940 chip actually equipped with the Euler Good Cat model was released in October 2016, the overall use of 14nm process, its CPU using 4 cores 4 threads x86 architecture, computing power of 187GFLOPS, shipping price of about 34 US dollars. Although the difference in performance between the two chips is obvious, the Intel A3940 chip can meet the basic operation of the car machine, but in the actual use, there will be problems such as stuttering and few applications, and the use experience is not good.
For many consumers, in the case of vehicle specifications, performance and other aspects of the same condition, consumers will be more inclined to choose the more advanced model of the car chip, Euler ORA officially said in the November 22 response that "the Euler good cat model currently on sale is listed in November 2020, the car machine has indeed not been equipped with Qualcomm 8-core chip, in the planning, this configuration was originally intended to be equipped on future models ...", which means that If the relevant automaker can inform the consumer of the true information of the chip model of the vehicle in advance before making a purchase decision, the consumer is very likely to postpone the purchase decision and wait for the model equipped with the "Qualcomm 8-core chip" to be listed before purchasing. Based on Euler ORA's official response, industry professionals believe that Euler Good Cat's false publicity constitutes fraud, and that the fraud is sufficient to induce consumers to make a purchase intention.
The consumer's evidence is crucial
Tesla has a similar situation in cases where car chips do not match the hype and trigger consumer lawsuits. In 2020, Tesla was sued by consumers because of the chip problem equipped with the Model 3 model, and some Tesla owners found that the "vehicle controller model" in the car environmental protection list was "1462554" after purchasing the Tesla Model 3 model, but after dismantling the car, it was found that the vehicle controller codenamed "1453112" was used on the car. According to the information previously released by Tesla, the vehicle controller with the model "1462554" is tesla HW3.0 version of the intelligent driving chip, while the vehicle controller with the model of "1453112" is the Tesla HW2.5 version of the intelligent driving chip, Tesla's official WeChat public account article said" The HW3.0 chip is 21 times faster than the HW2.5 chip, and all Tesla vehicles currently being manufactured have the hardware needed for fully autonomous driving, with the fully autonomous driving chip as the core component of the vehicle. "Some consumers have determined that Tesla has committed fraud in the sales process and demanded a refund of one and three losses."
Judging from the judgment on the dispute over the sale and purchase contract of the tesla-related sales company currently published, since the consumer "did not agree on the model of the chip when signing the "car order contract" with the Tesla-related sales company", the consumer also "did not produce evidence to prove that it should be 1462554 requirements for the model of the auxiliary driving chip when purchasing the vehicle involved in the case", "according to the existing evidence, it is not enough to determine that the Tesla sales company, Tesla has made a clear commitment that the chip model of the vehicle involved in the case should be 1462554. "As a result, the consumer in the relevant lawsuit bears the legal consequences of not being able to prove, and ultimately loses the lawsuit."
The analysis of the above cases can be found that in the process of car purchase, consumers should make a clear agreement on the relevant information of the vehicle they purchased when signing the "Car Purchase Contract", and at the same time pay attention to collecting and retaining the relevant information that the automobile manufacturer and the seller clearly informed the consumer in the process of publicity and introduction, and fix the evidence in a timely manner to prevent the adverse consequences in the relevant litigation after the dispute cannot be presented.
Automakers will face administrative penalties from regulatory authorities
Finally, according to article 55 of the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China, "Whoever, in violation of the provisions of this Law, publishes false advertisements, shall be ordered by the market supervision and management department to stop publishing advertisements, order advertisers to eliminate the impact within the corresponding scope, and impose a fine of not less than three times but not more than five times the advertising expenses, and if the advertising expenses cannot be calculated or are obviously low, they shall be fined between 200,000 and 1 million yuan...". In the administrative penalty made by the Yiwu Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau on April 3, 2020, we can see that the party Yiwu Times Subaru Sales Co., Ltd. publicized the models sold, and in August 2018, yiwu Youhua Culture Communication Company was required to produce a brand model configuration comparison poster, which showed that the configuration was inconsistent with the four configurations of the "Forester 2019 2.0i Deluxe Edition" sold by the parties with turning head, induction wipers, and panoramic skylight side cameras. Violations of Article 17 of the E-Commerce Law of the People's Republic of China and the first paragraph of Article 4 of the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China constitute the publication of false advertisements. Administratively punished by regulatory authorities.
Obviously, even if the car manufacturers and sellers of Euler Good Cat have obtained the understanding of consumers through the corresponding compensation plan, because the car chip described on its official website and advertising is inconsistent with the car chip actually carried by the vehicle, it may also be punished by the regulatory authorities for violating the relevant provisions of the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China.
The vehicle functions and related configurations described by automobile manufacturers and sellers in the publicity should be consistent with the actual functions and configurations of the vehicle, especially for the information that consumers are more concerned about and the core information of the relevant models as the selling point, we must be cautious, if false publicity occurs, it will not only face huge claims from consumers, but also face penalties from regulatory authorities, and more importantly, it will seriously affect consumers' trust in the brand and cause huge reputational damage to the brand.