Written by | Li Xuanqi
Edit | Wen Jie
Source | Zinc scale
Euler, the self-proclaimed "car brand that knows more about women", has not been restless lately.
Since being questioned by car owners for false propaganda in November 2021, Euler seems to have been unable to get rid of the dark cloud of "chip doors". The key to this storm is that the Qualcomm octa-core chip once advertised by Euler Good Cat was found by consumers to be untrue, and the chip actually used by the domestic Euler Good Cat is an Intel quad-core chip.
Once exposed, a number of consumers launched complaints and even appeals, some car owners issued a joint statement to make appeals, and the Euler brand has issued two statements in response, and has also modified the compensation plan many times. But the tug-of-war continues, and the aftermath continues.
Four years ago, Great Wall Motor established the Euler brand of new energy vehicles and launched the Euler Good Cat series in 2020. With a Porsche-like design, as well as a naming style and marketing style aimed at female users, Euler Good Cat and Euler's entire brand have tasted the "female dividend".
For now, Euler is facing a backlash.
"Chip door" beginning and end: good cat is not safe "core"?
"Euler doesn't know more about women, he knows better how to fool women." In January 2022, Zhao Xiao, the owner of the Euler good cat Athena model, was still dissatisfied with the attitude of the Euler brand, "Although I may not understand these car configurations, this does not mean that female car owners can cheat casually." ”
Back in November 2021, some consumers pointed out that the chip used by Great Wall Motors Euler Good Cat is not the Qualcomm octa-core chip it has always claimed, but the Intel quad-core chip in 2016. According to the new car new technology report, Euler Good Cat exported the CAR to the UK in October, using a chip model that is Qualcomm 8155.
The difference between the two chips is not small. According to the comparison of the two chips released by the "Electronic Engineering Album", the official price of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 is 80-100 US dollars, while the Intel Atom X5 E3940 chip is only 34 US dollars. In addition, there are large differences between the two chips in terms of the number of CPU cores, manufacturing processes and GPU computing power.
Public opinion was in an uproar, and many consumers began to defend their rights and collect relevant evidence. According to a promotional material provided by a car owner who picked up the car in September, the "Euler Good Cat Parameter Configuration Table" that was still distributed in the Baoding 4S store in July 2021 shows that the intelligent service processor configured by the ORA Smart-cafe OS coffee intelligent car control system is Qualcomm's professional on-board processing chip.
Promotional materials provided by the owner
The zinc scale from an Euler good cat rights group to get a retained Euler official website screenshot shows that whether in the model introduction or in the promotional information of the conference, Euler good cat has also claimed to be equipped with Qualcomm professional vehicle processing chip, with 8 Kryo TM CPU processing cores, 1 Qualcomm Adreno TM 640 GPU graphics processor and 1 high-performance Hexagon TM 6DSP digital signal processor.
Previous publicity on Euler's official website (relevant content has been removed)
However, after testing by the owners, it was found that the configuration of the good cat was not the same.
On November 22, 2021, Euler officially issued its first official statement acknowledging that "the Euler Good Cat model currently on sale will be listed in November 2020, and the car machine has indeed not yet been equipped with Qualcomm 8-core chips." In the plan, this configuration was originally intended to be installed on future models. And proposed to compensate with a 7200 yuan worth of rights and interests packages, including Carplay and HiCar functions, an extension of two years of free entertainment traffic packages and the first owner of the three electric lifetime warranty service. This statement was later deleted.
Subsequently, on December 6, 2021, CCTV Finance also made an investigation into Euler's replacement of chips, saying that "the brand side stole chips, played word games or was suspected of consumer fraud." ”
3 days later, Euler issued a statement again, no longer mentioning the "chip" dispute, while changing the compensation content, on the basis of the tiger's wing rights package, the first owner's lifelong warranty of sandian was upgraded to a lifetime warranty of the whole vehicle, and the first owner enjoyed 10,000 yuan of charging rights.
Euler triple solution (chronological order from left to right)
During this period, Euler's official website has deleted promotional content about Qualcomm chips.
Euler's solution apparently struggles to calm consumer sentiment. "Mainly because many car owners have successively discovered the problems of the car, and compared with the problems that have been exposed, Euler's attitude is like drawing a big pie and fooling people." Zhao Xiao told Zinc Scale that after she joined an Euler rights protection group, she found that many car owners' cars had different degrees of failure, such as a sudden black screen in the reversing image, slow navigation, the AI system could not automatically identify the owner, and the brake pads sounded abnormally.
Zinc Scale obtained a piece of evidence of common malfunctions of Euler good cats in this group, and found that the problems mainly focused on screen failures and 360 panoramic image delays.
"Like myself, I actually rely on reversing images, but now it's not long before I pick up the car, I have encountered several times of sudden black screen, and I have contacted many times after-sales, the other party said that there was no big problem, let me restore the multimedia settings, but in fact, later I found that many car friends are also facing the same situation, and even some car friends almost hit people because of this sudden failure." Zhao Xiao said.
Although it is still uncertain whether these faults are related to the chip problem, many consumers have speculated, "Don't they all say that the appearance of the low-end problem of the chip is reflected in the multimedia field?" ”
Major complaint platforms have also begun to complain about Euler's good cat. Among them, the car complaint website "Car Quality Network" released the complaint list in December 2021, and great wall motor Euler good cat "sales fraud, inconsistent with publicity", with a total of 839 complaints occupying the top position in the complaint list. In the whole year of 2021, the number of complaints about euler good cats reached 2283.
The black cat complaint platform also appeared more than 400 related complaints, the main complaints are "chip stealing beams and changing columns", "defrauding consumers" and so on.
In addition, many car owners have begun to seek legal help. In fact, according to the Measures for the Punishment of Acts Infringing on the Rights and Interests of Consumers, the sale of products or services by means of false or misleading product descriptions, commodity standards, physical samples, etc., is indeed fraudulent.
The owners huddled together, and the aftermath continued
At the end of December 2021, Euler's compensation plan was changed again: the previously proposed charging rights of 10,000 yuan became "the first car owner's 10,000 yuan charging rights can be discounted".
Many car owners began to receive news from sales and were persuaded to sign a consent agreement before December 31, 2021, otherwise they could not get relevant compensation, "if you don't sign, it is equivalent to automatically giving up." A consumer's chat history posted on social platforms shows that the sales advised them to "be sure to give up?" In this case, there will be no more in the future, which is a pity. ”
However, in the joint statements of some car owners currently disclosed, some car owners have put forward other demands, "First, replace the car machine chip, clarify the replacement time and give compensation and lifelong warranty; second, do not replace the car machine: 1. Choose to return the car, unconditionally return the car (including all costs) plus 50% of the car price cash compensation." 2. Do not return the car, compensate 50% of the cash of the car price, and the whole vehicle lifetime warranty, free maintenance, 8 years of free traffic; replace other vehicles of the Great Wall within three or three years, and the good cat is deducted according to the original price of the invoice amount. ”
At present, Euler has not made a new response to the above statement.
Zinc Scale noted that in the rights protection groups in Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen and other places, car owners are repeatedly reminding them not to sign agreements and adhere to the demand of "one refund and three losses". The basis for this claim is Article 55 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of The Rights and Interests of Consumers: 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 compensation shall be 3 times the price of the goods purchased by the consumer or the cost of receiving the service, and the right to legal action shall be reserved.
According to a rights protection group joined by Zinc Scale, the lawyers in the group have accepted the representation lawsuits of hundreds of car owners. According to Radar Finance, a team of lawyers at Shanghai Minglun Law Firm has received more than 30 consumers to sue Great Wall Motors and its sales company, and the number of entrusted clients is still increasing every day.
In this ongoing tug-of-war, a wave of unrest and the aftermath rise again.
After the "chip problem" was suspected of false publicity, the Bluetooth configuration of Euler Good Cat was also questioned that the propaganda did not match the physical object. In the promotion of Euler's official website, Euler Good Cat's car Bluetooth is 5.0, but the owner found that it is actually configured as Bluetooth 4.2.
The picture above is Euler's publicity, and the picture below is the actual inspection of the owner
According to public information, Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth 4.2 are different in transmission rate, transmission distance, power consumption and compatibility, of which the transmission rate is taken as an example, Bluetooth 5.0 compared to Bluetooth 4.2 version, can bring twice the data transmission speed, in terms of data transmission capacity improvement is up to 800%.
In addition to bluetooth problems, there are also car owners who have found new problems. Dong Xin, who purchased a good cat car on September 10, 2021, found that the left rear door of his newly proposed car had paint falling off 18 days later, believing that the car had been painted before, so he filed a complaint with the market supervision department. According to the "Consumer Rights Dispute Mediation Letter" provided by it, the seller said that the car was "repaired before the certificate of conformity was issued before leaving the factory", and after the two parties met for mediation, the seller was willing to pay 17,000 yuan as compensation and paint repair service to the left rear door of the complainant's vehicle.
A car owner from Yiwu on the autohome recently complained that the good cat GT model he had been driving for three months was suspected of being a defective vehicle, because the trunk also had the problem of automatic opening.
Although this may only be an isolated case, it has also made more car owners feel uneasy.
In addition, because many car owners need to provide car purchase contracts as evidence in the process of rights protection, some car owners realize that the specific configuration of the model is not specified in their car purchase contracts, and some car owners have not yet obtained the contract. When Euler's good cat is in controversy, it becomes more difficult for the owner to ask for a car purchase contract.
Wang Yue, who booked a car on September 1, 2021 and picked up the car on October 4, learned of the chip problem of Euler Good Cat, and asked for a car purchase contract from the sales in January 2022, but the contract obtained had already stated that the chip used in the model he purchased was an Intel chip.
The use of Intel chips is now stated in the car purchase contract
"This is equivalent to knowing about the use of Intel chips when I bought the car, but I still advertised Qualcomm chips when I bought it, so I can't sign this contract now." In desperation, Wang Yue temporarily refused to sign the contract.
And many car owners did not even ask for the contract, "the sales said that the contract and the invoice are the same." ”
Female users choose to deviate, Euler or irretrievable
As of January 12, 2022, Great Wall Euler has not yet given a new response to the demands of car owners, but has avoided the problem and continued to launch new product promotions. According to its promotion, Euler will launch at least 4 models this year, including ballet cat, lightning cat, punk cat and cherry cat, of which cherry cat mainly targets overseas markets.
Why is it difficult to agree to the demands of car owners to "refund one and lose three"? The reason may be that it is difficult to bear the high cost.
According to media reports, Euler good cat model currently delivered a total of 30,000 vehicles, if the model of the chip has problems, to the average price of the Euler good cat model of 120,000 yuan, its amount will be as high as 3.6 billion yuan, if in accordance with the "refund one loss three" compensation, Euler automobile this "stealing chip" incident, the maximum will bear more than 10 billion yuan of compensation amount.
Another possibility is that Euler may still be pinning his hopes on "fooling through" with the current compensation scheme.
"After all, the good cats, white cats and black cats that Euler is currently launching are actually mainly aimed at female users, and from the perspective of Euler's consistent publicity and design, it can also be seen that it is mainly in the female market, so it is not difficult to guess that Euler has eaten the mentality that female users value appearance and do not care so much about configuration." A car 4S shop seller told Zinc Scale.
Such a positioning did allow Euler to have results quickly. Since June 2021, the sales of Euler Good Cat have climbed all the way, and by November, it has reached the level of nearly 9,000 units sold per month, which is not only in the absolute leading position in the new energy vehicle market of the same level, but even in all A0-class models, The single-month sales of Euler Good Cat rank second, and the annual sales volume has also entered the top five.
Image source: ZAKER
In fact, from the main reason for buying a good cat, most female car owners do value the appearance of a good cat. On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, there is no shortage of car owners who start because of the good cat appearance, "At that time, the family did not recommend me to buy it after understanding the configuration, but I just liked the good cat's face too much, so I firmly chose to book a car." Mu Mu, 27, posted a video on the Little Red Book, saying, "I am full of joy to take the 'cat' home, and after two months, I am upset because of various failures, and now I regret it very much." ”
Mu Mu is not alone, whether it is Zhao Xiao, who has begun to defend his rights, or many new car owners who have booked cars but have not yet picked up cars, they have begun to be disappointed in the "chip incident" and the common disease of the good cat itself, and they are also dissatisfied with Euler's attitude. "The so-called favorite woman is just a pretense, this incident let us see Euler's true attitude, and did not put the rights and interests of female users first, so that we car owners who came for the face of the car have a long memory." A female car owner wrote on social media.
Although in the short term, the sales of Euler's good cats are still rising, in the long run, Euler needs to face up to this crisis of trust. As industry analysts have pointed out, if Euler Automobile does not handle the "chip door" incident this time, the subsequent sales will continue to plummet, and the brand that has been established for 3 years is likely to be short-lived.
Relevant data also prove this judgment from the side, according to Xinmeng Finance, implicated by the "chip gate", the stock of Great Wall Motors, the parent company of Euler Automobile, also ushered in a plunge. Taking December 10 as an example, the closing prices of Great Wall Motor's A shares and H shares on that day were 56.75 yuan / share and 30.1 Hong Kong dollars / share, down 11.45% and 17.98% respectively from November 22, which also caused Great Wall Motors' market value to evaporate tens of billions of yuan in less than a month.
Therefore, in order to seek a longer-term development, Euler also needs to have more reverence for car owners. The first thing that needs to be solved is the current storm.
(The consumers in this article are pseudonyms)