Introduction: Why did Mercedes-Benz's "new technology" on the EQC and Tesla's "old tradition" that it has always adhered to have "overturned"?
On February 18, according to the official website of the State Administration for Market Regulation, Beijing Benz 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 Measures for the Implementation of the Regulations on the Administration of the Recall of Defective Automobile Products.
Effective August 15, 2022, Beijing Benz will recall some EQC electric vehicles with production dates from November 30, 2018 to December 15, 2021, for a total of 10,104 vehicles.
Considering that the model has been on the market since the end of 2019, the sales performance has been flat, with wholesale sales of 3863 units in 2020 and 6098 units in 2021, which means that Beijing Benz almost has to pull back the cars it sells and repair them.
Such a price and cost is really not cheap, and for Mercedes-Benz, which saw a sharp rise in profits last year, and Beijing Motor, a Hong Kong stock, it will pay a price for its own quality problems. More importantly, this has caused a confidence blow to the market consumer side of Mercedes-Benz's electrification transformation. The proud Mercedes-Benz of the fuel car era, is it reliable to build electric vehicles?
Coincidentally, on the same day, Tesla also filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulation, involving 26,047 partially domestic Model 3 and Model Y. The reason for the recall is that the heating function in the car may fail, and the windshield defrost function is reduced, resulting in poor vision of the driver and a safety hazard.
Unlike the Mercedes-Benz EQC, Tesla only needs remote OTA "patching" to complete this recall.
The launch of two recalls on the same day seems to be just a coincidence, but in fact, it is a very subtle portrayal of the current automotive industry. For Chinese consumers, this is probably not a good thing behind this.
1) EQC: Is it all the curse of innovation?
In response to the large-scale recall of its electric vehicles, Mercedes-Benz mentioned that due to supplier production deviations, the cooling system in the electric drive module of some EQC vehicles may have insufficient sealing or will lead to coolant penetration.
Although Mercedes-Benz blamed the lack of sealing on "supplier production deviations" in its response, the five words "coolant penetration" had to be reminiscent of the "rotor water cooling technology" used by Mercedes-Benz in its first pure electric SUV, the EQC.
"Rotor water cooling technology" is a cutting-edge technology in water cooling technology, but also the german ZF Group engineers are proud of the work - can be without the use of oil cooling system, the "rotor" in the motor to achieve cooling, to ensure heat dissipation efficiency at the same time, reduce the interference with the operation of the motor, improve transmission efficiency.
However, adopting this genius design comes at a cost, and the complex mechanical construction makes this sealing system more susceptible to leaks than traditional water-cooled systems.
2) The motor that cannot be replaced
Although there is no direct evidence that multiple Mercedes-Benz EQC coolant leaks are due to the use of "rotor water cooling technology". But after adopting such radical water-cooling technology, should Mercedes-Benz be more sensitive to complaints about motors?
When some EQC owners reported that the coolant was not reduced normally, the Mercedes-Benz 4S store did not realize that the coolant leaked, but simply replenished the coolant to the vehicle. And when some EQC car owners reflect that the motor has failed, the Mercedes-Benz after-sales staff only said, "Burning the motor is an occasional failure, and it is good to replace the motor." ”
To some extent, if the problem of coolant leakage is not solved, other means may be to cure the symptoms rather than the root cause, and the result can only be to let the Mercedes-Benz owner replace the motor in vain. Some car owners reported that they saw many owners who changed the motor twice in the Mercedes-Benz rights protection group, and even changed it three times.
Despite the complaints of Mercedes-Benz owners, Mercedes-Benz has not responded to this matter head-on, nor has it publicly given a clear solution. It was not until January 18 that 68 EQC users issued a joint statement on issues related to the failure of large-scale motors, denouncing the protection of rights to Mercedes-Benz, and Mercedes-Benz made its first response on January 21, saying that it was concerned and was being dealt with.
If Mercedes-Benz can deal with these problems in a timely manner and start the recall action as soon as possible, perhaps there will be no joint rights protection of 68 car owners.
At present, Mercedes-Benz has entered the field of electric vehicles in a big way, but it seems that it should not be in the manufacturing field that it should be good at, but Lenovo Mercedes-Benz is often relieved of large-scale product defect recalls.
Tesla, the market value of global automobile companies, always likes to solve problems through "patching", and the cost control strength can be described as first-class, but cars are not the same as mobile phones and computers, there are more patches, and many problems are exposed from the side.
3) Tesla: The "Old Tradition" of OTAs
It is often said that "technology is not guilty, the problem is often in people".
OTAs can be used to unlock new features and bring new experiences to users, but at the same time, they have gradually become the "old tradition" of new car-making forces to fix product problems.
A few days before the recall was announced in the Chinese market, Tesla launched a large-scale recall in the US market due to audio problems, a total of 578,600 vehicles, covering the entire series of Tesla on sale.
Not long after, in response to the constant exposure of the "ghost brake" problem, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that after receiving 354 related complaints, it decided to investigate.
All the situations listed above, Tesla can most likely be solved by OTA, compared with the situation faced by Mercedes-Benz EQC, it seems to be simply too easy.
However, for consumers, these problems are all related to driving safety. As the top brass of automobile companies often hang on their lips, "In the statistics of manufacturers, even if it is less than one in ten thousand, it is 100% of the cost for the parties."
OTAs, on the other hand, seem to be becoming a means for new car-making forces to divert this cost and buy time for polishing product quality.
Looking back at traditional automobile companies, especially Mercedes-Benz, a German luxury giant, in the face of the powerful offensive of new car-making forces, in the initial stage of transformation, they are all establishing an image of "car-making connoisseur" and "excellent quality" for consumers. At the same time, these traditional car companies in the early stage of turning to new energy products, but not willing to follow the new forces "copy the operation", they all hope to have their own innovations in the three electric or other core components and systems.
So we see that the heat pump of Volkswagen ID uses carbon dioxide technology, which makes the car have the best electric vehicle heating effect at present. BMW plans to launch the sixth generation of BMW eDrive electric drive systems in 2025. Mercedes-Benz adopted more innovative cooling technology on the first pure electric vehicle EQC, but did not expect that this "small innovation" actually "flipped over", becoming an extremely regrettable industry joke in the electrification transformation of German luxury car brands.
In recent years, the rise of the new energy automobile industry has put pressure on traditional fuel vehicle companies. Tesla, the global champion in tram sales, soared from $100 billion to $1 trillion in just 21 months, while Toyota, in second place, has a market capitalization of less than $300 billion.
On the surface, this is a century of competition and derby between the new forces of car manufacturing and the old traditional car companies. But as mentioned at the beginning, the two recalls of Mercedes-Benz and Tesla on the same day are more like a portrayal of the current automotive industry in a coincidence.
What leads to the "overturning" of Mercedes-Benz EQC quality is not the "small innovation" that fails in cooling technology, but the response from the after-sales link that is not in place when the user finds a product problem, and the exposure of the internal sensitivity to product details is not synchronized.
What also plagues Tesla is not the lack of technical maturity, but in the concept of car building, it does not understand what is the most important.
Interestingly, just after the news of Tesla's domestic recall came out, Sanhua Intelligent Control, which provided Tesla with an electronic expansion valve, issued an emergency statement clarifying that Tesla's product problems this time were caused by the interruption of controller communication, "This recall has nothing to do with the electronic expansion valve provided by the company." The company's major factories have stable product quality, strong demand, and two booming production and sales. ”
The next day, the price of SanhuaZhi Holdings rose by 2.29%, all the way to February 25, becoming the winner of the event. Correspondingly, as of February 25, Tesla's stock price was only $809.87 per share, a sharp drop of nearly one-third from the highest point of $1208 per share on January 4.
For automakers, without quality, let alone luxury; not safe enough, who dares to be smart?
For the auto capital market, "no rollover" is the best design of an auto stock.