On February 18, Beijing Benz Automobile Co., Ltd. filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulations in accordance with the requirements of the Regulations on the Administration of the Recall of Defective Automobile Products and the Implementation Measures for the Regulations on the Administration of the Recall of Defective Automobile Products. Beijing Benz Automobile Co., Ltd. has been recalling a total of 10,104 EQC electric vehicles with production dates from November 30, 2018 to December 15, 2021, effective August 15, 2022.
Why can't the recall be initiated in August?
Many people will issue this question when they see this news, but the February recall will not start until half a year later, and many people think that Xiaobian has mistakenly marked March as August. Regarding the timing of the recall, Mercedes-Benz's official response is: Since the electric drive module involved in this recall is produced by the overseas factories of the relevant suppliers, affected by various uncertainties in the current overseas market, including the epidemic, the current reserves of related accessories cannot meet the immediate implementation of large-scale recalls, so they can only be postponed.
In order to compensate for the loss of consumer rights and interests caused by the recall, Beijing Benz decided to extend the warranty period for the electric drive modules involved from the current 8 years and 160,000 kilometers to 10 years and 250,000 kilometers (subject to first-come).
The wait of half a year, especially in terms of the dynamic performance of the vehicle, is indeed a little too long. The warranty period is increased by 2 years and 90,000 kilometers, do you think this compensation is reasonable?
Recalls of sold models or all of them?
According to relevant sources, the vehicles involved in this recall are almost all the vehicles sold by Mercedes-Benz EQC.
According to public data, the sales volume of Mercedes-Benz EQC in 2020 is 3863 vehicles, and the sales of Mercedes-Benz EQC in 2021 is 6098 vehicles, and the cumulative sales volume is also about 10,000 units. Mercedes-Benz EQC was officially listed in China on November 8, 2019, positioning a medium-sized pure electric SUV, which is based on the fuel version of the Mercedes-Benz GLC, with a price starting from 499,800, due to the lack of sufficient core competitiveness, sales have been relatively dismal.
The reason for this recall is that due to the manufacturing deviation of the electric drive module, the cooling system in the electric drive module of some vehicles within the scope of this recall may have insufficient sealing, resulting in coolant leakage. If the coolant is slightly infiltrated into the motor, the insulation resistance value of the high-voltage system may be reduced after long-term use, and the vehicle may not start in extreme cases. Coolant leakage does not meet the requirements of the relevant national mandatory standards on the sealing of the cooling system, under extreme conditions, the output power of the electric drive module of the vehicle will be reduced, and there is a safety hazard.
Domestic EQC has encountered complaints from car owners
Before the official release of the recall news, in fact, a number of Mercedes-Benz EQC owners have reported that their vehicles frequently have motor failures.
Many car owners broke the news that their Mercedes-Benz EQC had a situation where the drive motor was burned out, and some people even changed the motor and burned it again.
Therefore, many car owners said that the cooling system of Mercedes-Benz EQC has congenital design defects, and changing the motor is not a cure for the symptoms. Last month, a car owner launched a joint statement online against the failure of a large number of motors. According to the statement, many Mercedes-Benz EQC owners' vehicles have major safety hazards of 1 or more power loss failures, and the owners' demands are different, namely: requiring return, changing, or extending the three-electric system to a lifetime warranty.
However, at that time, mercedes-benz's official response said: after matching with testing and maintenance records, most of the vehicles have been put into normal use.
Recall while new cars are on the market?
On February 18, relevant institutions publicly released the large-scale recall of Beijing Benz EQC. The Beijing Benz EQC has launched new models at the same time. It is reported that the domestic Mercedes-Benz EQC has launched a new 350 4MATIC special edition model, the new car is priced at 509,800 yuan, 10,000 yuan higher than the previous 350 4MATIC price, the vehicle configuration has increased the AMG body style components, and also provides 360-degree intelligent parking and blind spot assistance system. So far, the 2022 Beijing Mercedes-Benz EQC model has increased to 3 models, and the price range is 499,800-57.98 million yuan.
The recall involved in the old model has not been processed, and I wonder if consumers still have confidence in the Mercedes-Benz EQC? The answer sheets handed over by the "Wei Xiaoli" in 2021 are basically at an average annual delivery level of nearly 100,000 vehicles. The Mercedes-Benz EQC on the BBA front has only sold nearly 10,000 vehicles in 2 years, and may be bombarded by new forces, and it will be difficult to continue to strongly advance to the market segment of new energy intelligent electric vehicles.