New energy vehicles are frequently recalled, who can be responsible for driving safety?

Wen — Guo Ziwen

On the last day of 2021, the State Administration of Market Supervision announced that Tesla carried out a large-scale vehicle recall due to safety hazards, including some imported Model S electric vehicles, some imported and domestic Model 3 electric vehicles, a total of about 200,000 recalls. Shortly before that, Tesla had just recalled nearly 475,000 vehicles in the US market due to technical defects, and the total number of recalled cars before and after was about 675,000. According to Tesla's 2021 annual automobile production and delivery report, Tesla's global delivery volume exceeded 930,000 units in 2021, an increase of about 87.4% year-on-year. Comparing the two data, Tesla recalled cars within a week accounted for almost 73% of global deliveries in 2021, which is not surprising.

However, in the automotive market, Tesla is not alone, and such recalls have long been common. According to the announcement data of the State Administration for Market Regulation, in 2021, the domestic passenger car market has recalled more than 8.734 million vehicles, an increase of 31.9% year-on-year, involving more than 260 models of 63 car companies, including Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Porsche and other German brands, Wuling, Baojun, BAIC BJEV, Chery, BYD, Xiaopeng and other independent brands, as well as Tesla, Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota and so on. Looking at the causes of the recall, design defects and manufacturing process problems in the car and its parts are still relatively concentrated. In the recalled new energy vehicles, the proportion of power battery defects has gradually increased, and communication problems, software control and battery control problems have become increasingly prominent.

Power batteries remain the main trigger

Under the global carbon neutrality trend, the replacement of fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles has become an inevitable trend in the industry. In recent years, the automotive electronic and electrical architecture has been continuously upgraded, the number of chips in automobiles has gradually increased, the concept of software-defined vehicles has become a consensus, and new energy electric vehicles have gradually developed in the direction of networking and intelligence. Under this trend, the three-electric system and the on-board software and hardware have all exposed more technical defects and safety hazards, which has become an urgent problem to be solved in the upstream and downstream of the automotive industry chain. According to the data of the Association, in the first 11 months of 2021, the number of car recall batches reached 192 batches, and the number of recalls was about 1.74 million vehicles, an increase of 38% year-on-year. Among them, the number of new energy vehicle recalls has grown rapidly, and the impact of auxiliary automatic driving has gradually expanded, but overall, power batteries are still the main cause of recalls.

Looking back at the automotive market in recent years, there are not a few cars that have been recalled because of safety hazards. Different from traditional fuel vehicles, the core technology of new energy vehicles is the three-electric system (battery, motor, electronic control). In recent years, accidents such as spontaneous combustion, explosions, and brake failures of new energy vehicles have occurred frequently, and it is reported that most of the accident triggers are directly directed at the power battery. Among them, the core thermal runaway or the main cause of spontaneous combustion and explosion of the whole vehicle, and overcharging, short circuit, battery aging and quality problems of the battery itself may cause thermal runaway of the battery. In the past year, battery suppliers such as Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Fu Neng Technology, and LG Chemical have been deeply involved in automotive spontaneous combustion, fire, and recall. GM, Hyundai, BAIC, Great Wall, Chery and many other car companies have launched recall announcements because of the safety hazards of power batteries. Frequent car recalls have undoubtedly discounted the consumer user experience and seriously damaged the brand reputation of car companies and battery suppliers.

Software problems are becoming increasingly prominent

In recent years, the focus of the automotive market has gradually shifted to the field of new energy vehicles, and the main causes of automotive recalls have gradually changed, gradually shifting from hardware-led to problems such as three-electric system failures and software algorithm defects. In fact, even traditional fuel vehicles have software configurations that control engine injection ignition, transmission shifting, etc. With the transformation of automotive electrical and electronic architectures, software in automobiles can gradually implement more and more complex functions, which also means that the problems caused by software will be more and more. In December last year, Mercedes-Benz recalled some imported S-class and domestic C-class cars due to the configuration of the human-computer interaction system; Tesla recalled 12,000 cars in the US market because of software communication errors that could lead to the accidental activation of the emergency braking system; BMW Brilliance recalled 6,636 domestic iX3 electric vehicles due to battery control unit software design problems...

In addition, the large number of applications of the Internet of Vehicles makes the vehicle driving data face the risk of malicious attacks, and communication failures may also paralyze the overall system in an instant. OTA technology also faces security risks such as cloud servers, transmissions, communication protocols, and car terminals, as well as the risk of tampering with upgrade packages. Automotive application software in any aspect of data transmission, storage, processing, command control has great security vulnerabilities, and the errors in each link are related to the security performance of the overall system. We all know that software code can't avoid bugs, but automotive software can't tolerate bugs or any ambiguous statements. Automotive software is more focused on safety and reliability, and more redundant design is required, after all, there is no way to restart if there is a problem.

Stay in awe of technical iterations

The vast majority of the recall cases mentioned above are cars that have been shipped and delivered, and some have experienced multiple accidents to find that the cars have hidden fatal problems. Those recalls that did not have accidents often wrote "No accident report due to defects has been received" in a light flutter. A car with safety hazards is like a walking bomb, and we can't let it go just because the bomb hasn't detonated. Looking at the entire automotive industry chain, who can be fully responsible for car driving safety?

The trend of the new four modernizations of automobiles is significant, and the possible safety hazards will only increase. For the safety hazards of the car itself, the main engine factory recalls the problem in time after discovering the problem, which is a means to prevent the problem before it occurs or effectively avoid the further expansion of the accident. However, in order to fundamentally reduce the occurrence of accidents, for OEMs, battery suppliers and other auto parts manufacturers, we should increase the testing and verification of auto parts, three-electric systems and even software codes, improve quality specifications, improve the safety performance of the vehicle system as much as possible, and reduce the risk of unreliability of the car.

Facts have proved that even if it is a mature technology, the safety hazards cannot be completely avoided, not to mention the areas such as new energy vehicles that are not yet fully mature. But the life safety of consumers can not be completely "resigned to the fate", whether it is the main engine factory, battery suppliers, or Tier1, should maintain a sense of awe for technical iteration, technological innovation at the same time, but also to the safety and quality of the problem of caution, do not let consumers become sacrificial mice.