Image source @ WM Motor Official Micro
Wen 丨 wired travel, author 丨 Zhou Xiongfei, editor 丨 zi night
Recently, the owners of Weima Cars have been a bit bad.
First of all, since September last year, WM's EX5 models have frequent spontaneous combustion incidents, and for a time, Weima owners are afraid that their vehicles will also spontaneously combust.
As everyone knows, only a few days after the beginning of this year, Weima has fallen into the storm of "locking electricity".
Recently, according to a number of media reports, at the end of last year, WM launched a campaign called "New Year User Special", claiming that it can test vehicles for some car owners for free and give away 200 red envelopes, but at the same time, it conducts a "power lock" operation on the vehicle without informing the owner.
WM Automobile launched the "New Year User Premium" activity, screenshot from WM Zhixing APP
Simply put, "power locking" is a car company by rewriting the battery management system (BMS), re-setting the voltage range of the power battery in order to limit the upper charge limit of the battery and the total discharge charge. After such an operation, many Wei carriage owners found that their vehicles were not charged enough, so the overall mileage became shorter.
In response to this "black box operation", many Wei carriage owners have complained and complained, and the online travel has seen car owners complaining through black cat complaints, car quality networks and Weima Zhixing APP, and even a car owner has written a song called "200 blocks will deceive me" based on this incident, which once detonated the new energy automobile circle.
Wired Travel asked the WM official for verification of the "locking of electricity", but as of press time, the WM motor official has not made any response and explanation.
Such a "locking power" operation, in fact, before WM, there is a precedent.
As early as mid-August last year, according to media reports such as Future Automobile Daily, some owners of GAC Toyota iA5 submitted a report letter to the State Administration of Market Supervision, saying that GAC Toyota artificially reduced the usable capacity of the power battery through OTA upgrades without the consent of the owner, resulting in a shortened mileage.
Earlier, whether it was a foreign-funded new energy vehicle company Tesla, or the domestic independent new energy brands SAIC Roewe and BAIC New Energy, they were exposed to the "lock electricity" operation, and attracted car owners to protect their rights, for a time so that "lock electricity" once became a hot word in the new energy automobile industry.
Whether it is through OTA upgrades or offline manual modifications, the "power locking" operation of some new energy vehicle companies is real. Will car companies continue this behavior in the future? What will be the result of the rights protection of car owners?
1. After being "locked", the mileage is suddenly reduced
What some of the owners of the carriage did not expect was that a surprise event turned into a fright.
At the end of December last year, WM Motors officially launched a campaign called "New Year User Premium", according to the activity, WM official will randomly select 18888 users, to these users a comprehensive inspection of the vehicle and 200 yuan worth of Jingdong card, it deliberately called this activity "the new year, a surprise from WM Motors".
According to the official explanation of WM, this activity is randomly selected by it, and the selected users will be notified through the customer service telephone.
However, it is such an activity that seems to give benefits to users, and after some wei carriage owners experience, they find themselves "pitted".
Wang Bing is such a Wei carriage owner, according to him, before the New Year's Day received a call from the official WM, the other party said that he was selected as a lucky user, can participate in the "New Year user special" activity, and told him to come to the WM ma offline store as soon as possible to experience.
"At that time, when I received the call, I was still very happy, because I knew that there were still many owners in weima, and the probability of drawing myself was not high." Then on the last day of New Year's Day, I drove to the designated store in WM to do a full car inspection. Wang Bing recalled the line trip.
But what Wang Bing did not expect was that after this full vehicle inspection, the performance of the vehicle changed. "Before the charge can be charged to about 70 degrees, but after the inspection can only be charged to about 48 degrees, the overall mileage is also tens of kilometers shorter than before."
Charging details, image source respondents
According to Wang Bing's recollection, during the whole car inspection, Weima officials did not tell him that they would modify the parameters and settings of the battery, and after he saw that many Weijia owners were "locked", he realized that he should also be "locked" by Weima.
"Generally speaking, new energy vehicle companies lock the battery power SOC (battery charge state), thereby limiting the charge and discharge of the battery, and then changing the battery capacity, charge and discharge speed, such an operation is also known as 'locking the power'." Zheng Wei, an expert in power battery engineering, explained the connection travel.
In fact, Wang Bing's encounter like this is not unique.
According to the Zhonggong Automobile Network, as early as last July, there were car owners who complained and complained on the Internet one after another, saying that WM may privately carry out "power-locking" operations on their vehicles, so that the mileage of the vehicle is greatly reduced, from the original 350 kilometers to 260 kilometers, which is far from the 400 kilometers endurance declared at the time of purchase, which seriously affects the daily use experience.
For the doubts of these car owners, WM officials responded at the time, "This situation is the recent feedback of individual users, which is an accidental case." Officials attach great importance to this and have jointly investigated the incident with relevant suppliers. ”
Although the WM official responded quickly after the complaint, such incidents did not stop after this, but continued to occur.
Log on to the car quality network, you can see that since July last year, nearly half a year, consumer complaints about WM car lock electricity has been appearing, the reason for the complaint is basically "WM EX5 model in the system upgrade follow-up mileage is less" "WM manufacturers without consumer permission to upgrade the system follow-up navigation reduction".
Through the inspection of the connection travel, it can be found that since the emergence of complaints in July last year, there have been more than 50 complaints about WM's "locking the electricity".
Some of the complaints of consumers about WM Lock Electric are screenshotted from the car quality network
In addition to the car quality network, on the official website of the black cat complaint, the search for "Weima Automobile" as a keyword can also see complaints about "locking electricity". According to the complaint information, it is also due to the WM official upgrade of the car machine system, resulting in the battery voltage being limited and the actual mileage reduced by more than 50 kilometers.
On the official APP of WM, there are also many such complaints. After downloading the "Weima Zhixing" APP, searching for "locking the electricity" as the keyword, you can see more than 30 related user posts, all of which are questioning the behavior of Weima's private "locking the electricity" and asking the official to give an explanation.
However, except for the WM official response to the question of locking the power once in August, WM did not make any response and explanation in the face of many user questions that followed. Lianxing also inquired about WM officials, but did not get any response as of press time.
Such a "power lock" move is actually not the original creation of Weima, but the riot operation that many car companies have already played.
In August last year, according to future auto daily, some consumers complained to the State Administration for Market Regulation, saying that GAC Toyota had artificially reduced the available capacity of power batteries by upgrading BMS and other systems through a back-end OTA for a large number of GAC Toyota iA5 models produced before June 2020 without the permission of the owner.
According to the complaint consumers, after purchasing GAC Toyota iA5, the use experience has been very good, until the official BMS system OTA upgrade, the battery capacity of the vehicle was directly reduced from the previous 58.5kWh by 7.8kWh, resulting in a shortening of the cruising range of 60-70 kilometers.
In the face of complaints and questions from car owners, similar to the current WM, GAC Toyota also did not make any response after the incident, so that many iA5 car owners set up a rights protection group to protect their rights.
Also last year, models such as SAIC Roewe ERX5 and BAIC BJEV EX360 and EU5 were exposed by car owners to the phenomenon of power locking: the charging power was reduced, and the mileage was shortened. Coincidentally, before the phenomenon of "locking the electricity", these car owners also suffered from offline upgrades and OTA online upgrades.
In 2019, before that, Tesla also upgraded through OTAs, and carried out "protective upgrades" for some of its older models - reducing available power, reducing charging speed and increasing the remaining power displayed on the dashboard.
It should be noted that whether it is the currently exposed WM Motors, or the previous GAC Toyota and SAIC Roewe, or the earlier Tesla, these car companies have a common point before implementing the power lock - they have not obtained the consent of the owner, forced or privately modified the BMS through upgrades, and this operation is the key to the anger of many car owners.
For these new energy vehicle companies, in the face of consumer complaints and anger, why should they continue this operation?
2, private "lock electricity", why do car companies do this?
"Locking electricity" may have become a "fig leaf" for car companies.
If you simply comb through the timeline of the vehicle locking the vehicle through OTA upgrades or offline modifications, you can find that there is a common point - before these car companies perform these operations, or at the same time, the models of the car companies have been exposed to spontaneous vehicle combustion incidents.
Let's take WM Motors as an example. In the same month that its official launch of the "New Year" event, there were three spontaneous combustion incidents in a row for the WM EX5 model.
First of all, on December 20 last year, in a charging station in Zhengzhou City, a new energy vehicle that was charging suddenly caught fire, and finally the owner of the car said in an interview with Yu Video that the vehicle that caught fire had only been used for about 8 months, and this car was WM EX5.
WM EX5 after a natural accident, image source Yu video
Two days later, in Sanya City, Hainan Province, a new energy vehicle parked in the middle of the road spontaneous combustion, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily reported that the spontaneous combustion of the vehicle was put out by the local fire department, no casualties, but the vehicle has been burned, as far as the few logos left, the same as WM EX5.
As everyone knows, just a day later in Haikou City, Hainan Province, a new energy vehicle parked under the residential building suddenly caught fire, due to the larger fire, the vehicle parked behind the vehicle and the air conditioning unit on the wall of the residential building were burned to varying degrees. After the accident, according to some netizens on the wheel hub and other details to identify, the accident model is also a WM EX5.
This means that in less than a week, WM EX5 burned one in Zhengzhou, Sanya and Haikou, and for these three accidents, WM official did not make any response, so that WM was called "the hottest car company at the end of 2021" by netizens. ”
The spontaneous combustion incident related to WM is not only last month. As early as last October, according to a number of media reports, WM's electric vehicle products had a number of vehicle fire accidents in a row, and the vehicle was in the process of parking and charging at the time of the accident.
At the same time as the spontaneous combustion accident of these vehicles, WM is also "locking the electricity" on some of its vehicles.
Coincidentally, such a seemingly fortuitous event also happened to GAC Toyota.
Just a month before some owners of GAC Toyota iA5 complained that GAC Toyota locked the power, in Xiamen, Fujian Province, a new energy vehicle that was charging suddenly caught fire, and when the fire was extinguished, the accident model was identified as GAC Toyota iA5.
Although GAC Toyota did not explain after the accident, some car owners speculated that the accident occurred due to a defect in the power battery. It is not surprising that there will be such speculation, after all, a description can be seen in the previous owner's report letter to the State Administration of Market Supervision: "Before, a batch of iA5 models was called by the 4S store alone to let the owner go to replace the power battery, but it was not a recall implemented through formal channels." ”
For WM, which frequent spontaneous combustion accidents, it has also admitted that its own power battery has defects.
At the end of October last year, in response to several spontaneous combustion accidents in vehicles that occurred that month, WM Motor filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulation. According to the recall plan, from Now on, the main recall will be made to users of some WM automobile products manufactured from June 8, 2020 to September 23, 2020, equipped with power batteries of designated models, totaling 1,282 units.
WM recall description, the source of the WM motor official micro
In terms of the reason for the recall, WM officially believes that it is due to the fact that the battery cell supplier mixed in the production process with impurities, resulting in abnormal lithium analysis in the power battery, which may lead to a short circuit of the battery in extreme cases, causing the power battery to run out of heat and produce the risk of fire, and there is a safety hazard.
In other words, although WM admitted that there was a problem with the power battery mounted on some vehicles, it also dumped the responsibility on the supplier.
For this recall plan, some Wei carriage owners are not satisfied.
If you look closely at the sales volume of WM Motors from June to September 2020, we can see that the sales volume in these months is 8228 vehicles, combined with the "lock electricity" incident, many Weima owners at that time believed that the reason why WM would "lock electricity" was to avoid spontaneous combustion accidents again, avoid recalling more vehicles to reduce losses.
"New energy vehicles through the BMS adjustment to achieve the power battery charge, discharge process control, in general, reduce the power battery cell voltage and the speed of charging, discharging, indeed can reduce the probability of thermal runaway of the battery, reduce the incidence of spontaneous combustion accidents." Zheng Wei explained this to the connection travel.
In fact, for the power lock can effectively reduce the risk of spontaneous combustion, Weilai once wrote in a statement. After two consecutive spontaneous combustion accidents in Weilai's products in April 2019, its officials proposed a temporary solution a month later - through software updates, the maximum capacity of vehicles using fast charging is limited to 90%, minimizing the risk of spontaneous combustion.
After Weilai, in fact, there are many car companies that have spontaneous combustion accidents, but for the handling of accidents, they have adopted more private power locking behavior.
For example, Tesla, which also had a number of spontaneous combustion accidents in 2019, although it made an emergency update to the battery thermal management software after the accident, informing users that it was to optimize battery charging and thermal management, but did not declare the fact that it would lock the power and power.
In Zheng Wei's view, in the face of spontaneous combustion accidents, more new energy vehicle companies will choose the "power lock" action to deal with it than the recall. Because for now, the power battery is still the most expensive and necessary component in new energy vehicles, the recall will definitely make the car company bear more costs, and privately locking the electricity can help the car company achieve the purpose of "big things and small things".
Because of this, tesla in the front, weima and GAC Toyota, after the spontaneous combustion accident of their models, have chosen the treatment of private power locking, which is also regarded by the industry as a "fig leaf" for some new energy vehicle companies.
And will this "fig leaf" be chosen by more car companies in the future?
3. Will the "locking" continue?
To discuss this issue, we must first see whether the action of "locking the electricity" is reasonable.
"The behavior of car companies to lock electricity is not reasonable. First of all, consumers have the right to know about the purchased goods or services, and locking the power without informing the consumer violates the consumer's right to know; secondly, the vehicle after the lock is charged and charged, the mileage is shortened, which reduces the user experience and causes losses to consumers, and should be compensated. Xia Jinyan, a lawyer at Zhejiang Zeding Law Firm, told Lianxing.
Because of this, tesla in 2019 through the OTA upgrade, after shortening the mileage of some models, According to Electrork reported at the end of last year, Tesla was convicted of "locking the electricity" in Norway and was required to pay 136,000 crowns (about 100,000 yuan) to the owners involved in the case.
"Locking electricity", in addition to being unreasonable, is also a solution that treats the symptoms but not the root causes.
"When there is a problem with the power battery itself in some car companies, it should be further adjusted, optimized and improved for the battery cell itself or the BMS and the vehicle power matching to improve the stability of the overall battery system, rather than using the remedy of private power locking, because the latter cannot improve the safety performance and user experience of the battery pack itself." Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Yvrux Consulting, told Wired Travel.
In Zhang Junyi's view, such a power-locking behavior will not only make consumers not get a good product experience in the long run, but also make consumers gradually lose their trust in this car company and brand. Therefore, in addition to emergency relief, car companies must also do a good job of long-term consideration.
"Based on these spontaneous combustion incidents and the handling of WM after the fact, if I had to choose again, I would definitely not choose the WM brand." Wang Bing said so.
However, it should be noted that power locking has actually become a routine operation in the new energy automobile industry.
With the development of the new energy automobile industry, more car companies began to pursue higher mileage, to achieve this goal, the need for power batteries to provide more power, then a larger capacity of power batteries has become a just need of car companies.
For example, Tesla, Weilai, GAC Aean and other new energy vehicle companies released their own new battery technology last year, and have announced that after carrying this new battery, the cruising range of the vehicle will reach 1,000 kilometers, and even exceed this indicator.
NIO solid-state battery pack, picture source WEILAI official micro
Wired travel has been in "Tesla, Weilai, GAC's 1000 km battery, is it a real technology or a new gimmick?" This is discussed in detail in the article.
In addition, Tesla, Weilai and GAC Aegean and other car companies are also actively laying out their own supercharge and fast charging technologies, further shortening the charging time of power batteries, and becoming the focus of attention in the industry for a time.
It should be noted that while car companies have launched an "arms race" in the field of power batteries, the overall technological development of the power battery industry is not mature enough.
Zheng Wei introduced to the connection travel, due to the current technical limitations of the power battery, it is not possible to achieve 6-12 minutes to fully charge the power battery, if you want to achieve this fast charging technology now, it is bound to have a certain adverse impact on the life and stability of the battery, such as too much accumulation of lithium ions in a short period of time, causing a short circuit caused by lithium dendrites, causing the failure of lithium-ion batteries to cause thermal runaway, and even spontaneous combustion and explosion after that.
This has led to many new energy vehicle companies in order to ensure battery safety, will be "locked" before the vehicle leaves the factory. For example, when designing the battery management system, in order to avoid the overcharge and over-discharge of the power battery, to ensure the service life and stability of the battery, a safety margin will be set for the battery, such as 90% or 95% of the full battery will not be charged.
"When the battery cell and BMS cannot achieve 100% stability and safety, coupled with the fact that the battery will decay over time, the measure of power locking will most likely exist in the new energy automobile industry." However, the industry does not encourage private power locking behavior that presupposes the rights and interests of consumers. Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology, told Wired Travel.
Fortunately, at present, the state has begun to control the power locking behavior of car companies.
Since many power locking behaviors are achieved through OTA upgrades, or even do not require consumers to agree to the private implementation of car companies, in November 2020, the State Administration for Market Regulation regulated the car OTA filing of car companies, requiring manufacturers to file with the Quality Development Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation when OTAs are sold, regardless of whether it involves eliminating product defects.
In June last year, the State Administration for Market Regulation again issued the Supplementary Notice on the Filing of Remote Upgrade (OTA) Technology Recalls of Automobiles, which further regulates the filing of automobile OTAs by car companies.
Supplementary Notice on the Filing of Remote Upgrade (OTA) Technology Recalls of Automobiles, screenshot from the official website of the State Administration for Market Regulation
The notification contains detailed content filling requirements such as the type of OTA upgrade, the purpose of the upgrade, the upgrade push strategy, the upgrade failure handling mechanism, and whether the upgrade requires user confirmation and notification methods, which further manages and restricts the OTA service process of the car company to a certain extent.
In addition, according to Zheng Wei, the current power battery industry and new energy vehicle companies are also further regulating the measure of locking electricity, not only to let consumers know, but also to understand the reasons behind this action.
For the locking of electricity itself, it is possible to use a more humanized dynamic locking of electricity in the future (according to the degree of attenuation of the battery, dynamically control the total amount of charging and speed), rather than the current "one-size-fits-all" locking of electricity, in order to make the consumer experience more comfortable.
Because of this, in the industry's view, based on the development of power battery technology has not yet developed to a truly mature stage, the phenomenon of "locking power" is likely to continue to appear.
However, it is certain that if the car company only takes the power lock as a countermeasure after the spontaneous combustion accident, and does not really solve the problem, then the car company will eventually lose the trust of consumers.
Note: In the text, Wang Bing and Zheng Wei are pseudonyms.