Produced | Tiger Sniff Car Group
The author | Master Zi Nan
"The pain point of users is the starting point of WM's innovation," Shen Hui, founder of WM Motors, once said. Now, the pain points of WM Auto users have become the starting point of WM Auto's "evil".
According to WM users, at the end of last year, WM launched a campaign called "New Year User Premium", claiming that it could test vehicles for some car owners for free and give away 200 red envelopes, but at the same time, it carried out the operation of "locking the power" on the vehicle without informing the owner.
Weima's actions infuriated the owner. "In order to cover up the serious safety design defects of continuous spontaneous combustion of WM Motors, every effort was made to trick users into going to the door for 'maintenance', but in fact, the vehicle was locked, and the actual battery life of a large number of users shrank to 6-70%," WM users wrote in a statement. There was even a car owner who wrote a song called "200 Blocks Fooled Me" based on this incident.
The owner's statement contains some exaggerated descriptions, but does not affect the nature of the incident. Some car owners found that their WM EX5 had less available power after an OTA, the venting voltage rose from 333V to 340V, and the full power voltage dropped from 408V to 397V, roughly calculating, the actual endurance was reduced by 15%.
As of now, Weima has not responded to the matter.
"So far, WM has not responded, and the arrogance shown by WM in the past six months has completely chilled the users, and now we are collecting relevant evidence of WM Company's infringement of users from the majority of WM users, and filing a lawsuit with WM Company in a timely manner." On January 17, after the "lock electricity" storm continued to ferment for half a month, 173 Wei carriage owners decided to go to court.
Users' pain points should not be fooled
The technological innovation of new energy vehicles has brought more contradictions. For example, vehicle safety, user privacy, etc. In these aspects, consumers have almost no right to speak, and car companies have more room for "evil".
In the face of costs and benefits, users who were originally regarded as "gods" can be fooled. For example, in order to better sell advertisements, some car companies will steal users' private data, or in order to cover up product problems, to "lock the power".
"Locking power" is a car company by rewriting the BMS (battery management system) to limit the voltage and other parameters of the power battery, so as to limit the charge and discharge performance of the power battery. Such an operation will bring two specific changes to the vehicle, the upper limit of battery charge and discharge is limited, the vehicle mileage is reduced; the voltage is limited, and the life and safety of the battery will be improved to a certain extent.
For vehicles, "locking the electricity" is a pros and cons. The starting point of the enterprise to lock the electricity and lock the power of the vehicle is to avoid the accident of the electric vehicle, and it is a preventive measure for the thermal runaway accident. Reducing the individual voltage and the speed of fast charging also reduces the probability of thermal runaway of the vehicle.
However, the incident of WM Motors has caused users to resent that without the user's permission, the technical parameters of the user's vehicle have been modified without authorization, and even called it "New Year's Eve User Special".
In the WM lock-in incident, the user's pain point is insufficient battery safety. 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.
In the general process of the automotive industry, if there is a problem with core components such as batteries, the car company should recall the vehicle for quality inspection and replace the parts. General Motors, which is equipped with LG chemical batteries, does just that. In 2021, GM repeatedly recalled Chevrolet Bolt models and replaced the corresponding parts. GM said the estimated cost of recalling the aforementioned vehicles would be around $1 billion.
WM has also previously chosen to recall some of the problem vehicles. In October 2021, WM 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.
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.
However, after recalling the problem vehicles, WM "locked the electricity" on some vehicles. The above-mentioned users believe that WM's move shows that it did not recall all the problem vehicles, but chose to recall part of it, and then locked the power on the other part to avoid continued spontaneous combustion.
The user believes that WM's move is to avoid the cost of the recall. Power batteries are still the core components with the highest cost of new energy vehicles, and the cost of recall is huge, but privately locking the electricity can help car companies "make big things small".
In this process, whether WM has substantial fraud needs to be judged by the judiciary, but the act itself has caused emotional damage to users. "For car owners who use public charging piles, the frequency of charging has increased and a lot of time has been wasted," one owner told Tiger Sniff.
"If a car with a 50-degree charge becomes a 30-degree usable power, the equivalent of a battery that the user spends tens of thousands of yuan to buy only plays a 60% role, which has caused substantial damage to the user's property," another owner told Tiger Sniff.
"If there is indeed a quality problem, you can give feedback to the General Administration of Marketing, urge the company to recall, or file a civil lawsuit, but the civil lawsuit is relatively slow, and the requirements for consumer evidence are relatively high," a legal person told Tiger Sniff, and the relevant car owners need to collect evidence as much as possible to prepare for further rights protection.
What kind of punishment will be faced by car companies that choose to lock the electricity privately is a lesson from the past. According to Electrork, Tesla had locked the electricity in Norway and was required to pay 136,000 crowns (about 100,000 yuan) to each of the owners involved. The money is more than enough to buy a new battery.
Locking on power should not be the norm
For automotive quality assurance, locking the power is in fact a desirable act. Power battery life is irreversible, and locking the power is currently the best way to ensure vehicle safety. In daily life, consumers have fewer scenes of completely running out of power, and locking the power can extend the life of the battery to a certain extent.
From a procedural point of view, locking the power is an efficient and low-cost way to maintain product quality for car companies. Previously, car companies such as Weilai have adopted the strategy of locking electricity.
However, an industry insider believes that car companies choose the way of OTA power locking can only be used as a temporary remedy, and should not be used as a normalized means, "car companies can not sacrifice performance and reduce user experience in exchange for so-called product quality and safety."
In addition, the choice of whether to lock the electricity generously informs the user, reflecting the gap between car companies and car companies.
After two consecutive spontaneous combustion accidents in Weilai's products in April 2019, its officials proposed a temporary solution a month later - through a software update, the maximum capacity of the vehicle when 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, GAC Aeon and GAC Toyota.
"Whether the vehicle should be locked or not should be decided by the user, and the remote OTA of the car needs to be filed with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and whether the above-mentioned car companies violate the regulations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also needs to be discussed," the legal person told Tiger Sniff.
If WM Auto's OTA power locking behavior is not reported to the relevant departments, it will also face penalties from the relevant departments.