In the previous WM rights protection report, a number of car owners told Phoenix Motors, "My car is passive? ”
The owners were not sure of their doubts, but the vehicle seemed to have changed subtly, and they guessed that the official backstage was operating the data late at night. Until they saw that the relevant legal information of WM changed the terms, to be precise, it was a disclaimer that could change the owner's backstage information without their consent.
In addition to WM's illegal modification of relevant regulations, the anger of car owners also comes from the sense of powerlessness brought about by uncontrollable, and more importantly, they have begun to worry about data security.
From the suspicion of being "locked" years ago, to the "unlocked" during the New Year, the OTA was "hacked" in the process.
The case of Weima is the latest, but it is difficult to be the last.
OTAs are being abused due to over-convenience. This involves issues such as data security and user privacy. Even in August last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Access to Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products, which requires strengthening data security and specially regulating OTA functions.
OTAs have changed the value of cars and are pressing back on regulation.
Do you think OTAs are what you think they are?
Does anyone really care about OTAs?
Non-practitioners, non-interested enthusiasts, the reason for caring about OTA is most likely because they are OTA owners.
According to the data disclosed by the State Administration for Market Regulation, in 2021, various car companies reported 351 OTA upgrades, an increase of 55%, involving more than 34 million vehicles, an increase of 307%.
Some media have counted the top five car companies with the most OTA upgrades in 2021, namely Tesla 9 times, Ideal 7 times, Weilai 6 times, Xiaopeng 6 times, and Ji Fox 6 times. In the OTA upgrade, voice and driving functions are the focus of the upgrade of car companies in 2021.
Not long ago, car owners car owners cared about whether their car could be OTA or not, seeing it as a "very technological" ability. But then things changed, and some of them got bogged down in OTA disputes.
Just as Tesla is usually the earliest contributor to experience when it comes to smart cars, OTA disputes are no exception.
According to a Norwegian court ruling in May 2021, Tesla must pay 30 car owners 136,000 crowns (about 94,800 yuan) each.
This result is a response to tesla's "protective upgrades" in 2019 to some older models - Model X, Model S, etc. This is done by reducing the available power, reducing the charging speed, and increasing the remaining power of the dashboard. In simple terms, it is "locking the power".
This has to mention the "EX5 power locking incident" that occurred in WM Motors around January this year, and the operating principles of the two are consistent. Even before the Spring Festival, more than 170 Wei carriage owners chose to jointly sue, and it is estimated that they are likely to emulate the 30 Norwegian Tesla owners who successfully defended their rights.
The so-called "power locking" operation of car companies is the control of thermal management. By rewriting the relevant parameters of the BMS (battery management system), the key indicators such as the upper limit of the charging capacity and the output power of the power battery are limited.
Not only the above-mentioned Tesla Model S, Model X and WM Auto EX5, according to public information, GAC Toyota iA5, SAIC Roewe ERX5, BAIC BJEV EX360 and EU5 models have also been exposed to "lock electricity".
The common feature of car companies on this operation is that without the consent of the owner, the BMS is upgraded or forcibly upgraded, and the consequences are also caused by public anger.
Because the above BMS rewriting is achieved by car companies through OTA upgrades, and the direct consequence is that the endurance of the cars involved is significantly reduced, resulting in the "shrinkage of personal assets" of car owners. Therefore, in the impression of such car owners, OTA seems to have become a smart fig leaf for car companies to use the information asymmetry of car owners to evade problems.
It is worth mentioning that Ideal Auto is accused of using OTAs to implement the "overlord clause".
In July last year, the Ideal Car APP popped up a prompt to users saying that in order to form a "user portrait", data including user browsing information may be collected. Interestingly, although there are two options of "agree" and "disagree", if the user selects "disagree", he will directly exit the APP, and the user cannot use remote control, car key and other functions.
Many users expressed dissatisfaction with this, but two months later, the "overlord clause" began to be extended.
Some users receive an update push of the intelligent software system protocol, indicating that they will clearly collect in-depth user information such as the user's app account information, navigation data, entertainment system data, and input method content results. If you do not agree, you can no longer use the vehicle.
Therefore, in the eyes of some ideal car owners, OTAs have become accomplices in car companies infringing on users' privacy rights and interests.
Many people don't really know about OTAs, but their experience gives them the impression that OTAs facilitate the masking of product defects.
Wan Chunlei, an automotive technology expert, told Phoenix Auto that the essence of OTA is to rewrite programs with the help of online download technology of terminal devices and Internet models (this program can be a software program or a program that controls hardware).
Because OTAs can be upgraded remotely, that is, the skills that "make the car grow" overnight, smart cars are called "commonly used and always new" and "growable" cars.
In addition, it continues to improve terminal functionality and services for vehicles, and can also be used to quickly fix vulnerabilities and help implement vehicle recalls.
Who does OTA data belong to?
In the transformation and intelligence of automobiles, the OTA function has become an irreversible and necessary capability.
Some professional departments predict that the market penetration rate of intelligent and connected vehicles in mainland China will exceed 75% in 2025, higher than the global market level.
According to CITIC Securities, auto OTA penetration has increased from 4% in 2019 to 42% in November 2021.
So far, the automotive OTA process has shown a complex extension beyond the technical characteristics. There has been some debate in the industry, such as who belongs to the hardware and software data on the car products that users have purchased?
"From the perspective of the right to dispose of property rights, the user signed a contract to purchase the car product, according to the corresponding laws, the car, including hardware and software, should belong to the user's private property, that is, belong to the owner."
Wan Chunlei told Phoenix Auto that when the OEM factory performs and recommends OTA work to users with various statements such as "improving performance or delivery function and improving performance", in fact, it is necessary to look at the process rigorously.
"If the OTA content is free, or does not modify or destroy the initial state of the vehicle purchase, and only adds optimization or improvement to the vehicle status, it is basically acceptable. Conversely, if the content of an OTA is to modify the bugs (problems/risks) that existed before the product was sold, the nature of the so-called "welfare delivery" is completely different. ”
In addition, Wan Chunlei raised questions that because automotive products need to be approved by the relevant national authorities before they are listed, they can only be sold after the status of the products is confirmed. So does the manufacturer have the right to modify the status of the sold products approved by the state? Or, furthermore, does this modification of the content count as a modification? Will it result in a change in the user's private property? At the same time, has this change been verified and recognized by the national authorities? In addition, will there be other uncontrollable risks after the condition of the user's vehicle is changed?
Wan Chunlei said that those that should be defined as defective or need to be recalled should be in accordance with the corresponding national product recall regulations, perform the filing and approval procedures and be supervised throughout the process. If the car company omits the above procedures, it can modify and update the user's vehicle software content according to its own ideas, which involves relevant legal issues.
However, at the legal level, OTAs are not naked.
In November 2020, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) issued regulatory requirements for the filing of OTAs for car companies: regardless of whether it involves the elimination of product defects, manufacturers need to file with the Quality Development Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation when they OTAs for sold vehicles.
In June of the following year, the State Administration for Market Regulation once again issued the "Supplementary Notice on the Filing of Remote Upgrade (OTA) Technology Recalls of Automobiles", which further regulates the filing of OTA for car companies and further restricts the OTA service process to a certain extent.
"As mentioned earlier in the article, WM, Ideal and other car companies in the process of pushing OTA forced or disguised mandatory restrictions on users' independent choice of rights and interests of some behaviors from the legal level, is to be marked with illegal labels, not only illegal procedures, but also involves the user's wider range of other rights and interests protection issues", Wan Chunlei said, the solution of the above problems to return to the corresponding industry supervision, the development of new energy vehicles undoubtedly brings challenges to supervision, which requires the work of the regulatory authorities to match in place, otherwise the industry will have big problems.
epilogue:
Some have called smart cars "epic innovations comparable to the birth of computers."
With the in-depth development of autonomous driving, the cash flow mode of automobile companies represented by Tesla is undergoing extreme and profound changes.
Some industry analysts said that although the new version of OTA is generally updated for free, but payment is an indisputable trend, in the future through OTA upgrades to provide software services for car owners will become a new wealth password for car companies to generate income.
Talking about the "OTA with unclear nature" that some car companies have carried out, Wan Chunlei said that some car companies are to make up for the unreasonable state of products or eliminate dangerous states, and their purpose is to reduce their own quality and technical responsibilities in the end.
Regulatory Wakamatsu can only rely on the ethical benchmarking of automobile companies.
"Behind the OTA are all direct or indirect realization of OEM self-interest-based technology, the car-to-material interconnection intelligence is the same, without exception, every seemingly glamorous care behind the must have its own points", Wan Chunlei told Phoenix Auto, strengthen OTA supervision, strengthen the protection and supervision of users' private rights, is an important objective requirement for the development of smart cars based on legal attributes, legal relationships and other user core basic interests protection.