Produced by Radar Finance and | Li Yihui, ed. | Deep Sea
Recently, 245 Mercedes-Benz EQC owners jointly issued a statement, requiring Beijing Benz Automobile Co., Ltd. to immediately recall some EQC electric vehicles with production dates from November 30, 2018 to December 15, 2021.
Before the Spring Festival, a joint statement from 68 Mercedes-Benz EQC owners circulated online. In the statement, car owners have said that the Mercedes-Benz EQC they purchased has one or more motor failures in use, and they speculate that it is caused by the leakage of coolant to the motor.
The rights protection incident caused media attention after the network fermented, and Mercedes-Benz launched a recall process shortly after.
On February 18, the State Administration for Market Regulation reported that Beijing Benz recalled 10,104 of its EQC electric vehicles on the grounds of "manufacturing deviations". In this regard, Beijing Benz will replace the improved electric drive module assembly for the recalled vehicle free of charge to eliminate safety hazards.
It is reported that EQC, as Mercedes-Benz's first domestic electric medium-sized SUV model, was launched in November 2019, positioning a medium-sized pure electric SUV. However, this pure electric vehicle is not only recalled three times in two years, but also has a poor sales volume.
In the view of Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology, if the product has not solved the quality problem many times, the car should be discontinued and stopped selling on the market, rather than the problem of recall. And the hesitation about electrification has led to Mercedes-Benz on the road of electrification, and it is not as smooth as imagined.
Motor failure triggers the owner to protect his rights
In September 2021, Mr. Wang from Shenzhen became the owner of the Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle EQC. Two months after buying a car, on a trip to work in November, the vehicle suddenly lost power.
After the 4S shop inspection, the staff informed Mr. Wang that the power system of his vehicle was not in normal condition, and then replaced the motor.
Similar problems are not unique. On the China Net Auto Complaint Platform, there are 27 complaints about Mercedes-Benz EQC in 2021, of which 24 involve motor failures; on the Car Quality Network, there are 20 Complaints about Mercedes-Benz EQC in 2021, of which 19 involve motor failures.
Most of these cars mention that before the motor failure, the central control screen after the vehicle starts has prompted "fill the coolant", and then, the coolant will leak into the motor, resulting in motor failure, resulting in the vehicle can not start normally.
For the motor that needs to be replaced, the faulty vehicle that is still in the warranty period, although there is no need for the owner to pay for itself, but the Mercedes-Benz EQC uses a motor imported from Germany, and the transportation process is long, usually taking 1-2 months.
In addition to the long time that some car owners are difficult to accept, there are also owners who encounter the same failure problem again soon after replacing the new motor.
According to one complaining user, he even underwent two replacement motor overhauls in four months, but still could not be completely solved. The two overhauls not only caused the value of the vehicle in the second-hand car market to drop sharply, he was more worried that if the maximum repair time limit of the national warranty could not be solved, the 4S shop would no longer replace the motor for free, and the owner would have to pay for it himself.
As a result, 68 Mercedes-Benz EQC owners joined forces to issue a joint statement on issues related to the failure of large-scale motors.
In the statement, the owners said that mercedes-benz officials have not had a clear response to the frequent EQC bad motor problem, and they hope that the Mercedes-Benz executives will stand up, admit their mistakes in time, and give the owners who encounter motor problems an explanation and a reasonable answer.
According to the statement, after they purchased the Mercedes-Benz EQC, the vehicle had one or more motor failures, and most of them had 1-2 months before the motor failure, the vehicle central control screen would prompt the "fill coolant" style, and after opening the front cabin cover, the coolant traces were significantly reduced.
It is judged that the motor failure caused by the coolant penetrating the motor.
However, when the owner asked the 4S shop to provide a detailed work order, a motor failure report, the reason for replacing the motor, and whether there was a motor leakage, the 4S shop refused, which caused some car owners to be dissatisfied.
They suspect that Mercedes deliberately concealed the truth, pointing out that this was a flaw in Mercedes-Benz design.
According to relevant information, in new energy vehicles, the motor, power battery, and electronic control system are its three core components, which play a vital role in vehicle safety.
If the motor fails during the driving process of the vehicle, it will cause the power to be cut off, the vehicle will suddenly stall, or it will cause a fatal accident, and there is a serious safety hazard.
Therefore, the owners of the car made the following requirements in the statement:
It is hoped that Mercedes-Benz manufacturers will disclose relevant information and solutions for Mercedes-Benz EQC motor design defects; initiate a recall procedure for automobile product quality defects to eliminate safety hazards in a timely manner.
For owners who have replaced the motor, they should all implement the relevant policies in accordance with the new version of the three-guarantee policy, return or change the car; for all Mercedes-Benz EQC owners with motor, battery and electronic control failures, extend the warranty period of the three-electric system and extend the lifetime warranty commitment.
After the recall, it was complained by 245 car owners
After the owner's rights protection statement was made public, Mercedes-Benz officials said that they were confirming and actively responding to the demands of EQC car owners one by one.
On February 18, Beijing Benz Automobile Co., Ltd. filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulation, and from August 15, 2022, recalled some EQC electric vehicles with production dates from November 30, 2018 to December 15, 2021, totaling 10,104 vehicles.
The reason for the recall is that due to the manufacturing deviation of the electric drive module, the cooling system in the electric drive module of some vehicles 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.
In addition, the coolant leakage does not meet the requirements of the relevant national mandatory standards for the sealing of the cooling system, and under extreme conditions, the output power of the electric drive module of the vehicle will be reduced, and there is a safety hazard.
Beijing Benz said that it will replace the improved electric drive module assembly for the recalled affected vehicles free of charge; before the vehicle recall and maintenance, if the user encounters relevant fault information prompts, he should contact the Mercedes-Benz authorized service center in time to deal with it.
However, Mercedes-Benz's recall measures not only failed to appease the emotions of EQC owners, but also caused a new wave of complaints.
On March 8, a number of media reported that mercedes-Benz EQC was again complained by consumers, and 245 car owners issued a joint statement.
The statement said that the owners of the above recall notice were dissatisfied with the above-mentioned recall notice that "the concept of design defects was secretly replaced by manufacturing deviations", "the front and rear replacement of motor assemblies were described as drive modules", and "large-scale safety hazards were described as risks that may occur under extreme conditions", believing that Mercedes-Benz had the suspicion of stealing the concept and covering up the problem.
According to the joint statement, 245 owners are the owners of the evicted EQC vehicles, most of whom have experienced replacing the motor as little as once and as many as four times. This recall is already the third recall notice experienced by car owners in less than two years of purchasing a car.
"The previous recall has not been resolved, and new recall notices have followed, and we believe that Mercedes-Benz continues to deliberately conceal the truth, stealing the concept of design defects into manufacturing deviations, and continuing to put unqualified products that have not undergone complete safety testing on the market without improvement, allowing Chinese consumers to endlessly act as guinea pigs of defective products."
For the "perfunctory" in the recall notice, the owners said that they would never accept it and raised 7 questions:
1. The relevant functional departments shall announce the total sales volume of Mercedes-Benz EQC within the time frame of the recall, so as to judge the failure rate, not the manufacturing deviation of the official response;
2. Urge the relevant functional departments to notify Beijing Benz to issue an investigation report truthfully, and after the assessment of the recall technical organization, re-issue the recall notice, and truthfully announce the known and other problems of the car, and propose a thorough solution;
3. Each replacement of the motor means that the registration date of the driving license must be replaced, and the problem caused by the design defects of Mercedes-Benz has become an N-hand car, and the depreciation value of the vehicle cannot be explained;
4. Before the recall date on August 15 this year, how to ensure the normal driving safety of car owners in this half year;
5. In view of the existence of EQC vehicles due to the infiltration of coolant causing the motor to burn out and lose power, there will be a rear-end risk, mercedes-Benz is required to immediately recall the vehicle, do not delay with any interface;
6. After replacing the motor, the vehicles have experienced a significant decline in the mileage, and cannot be restored to the 400 km endurance advertised by Mercedes-Benz at the time of car purchase;
7. After recalling and replacing the motor, can we ensure that the problem of coolant leakage and burning the motor is fundamentally solved? At present, there are cases of leakage in vehicles leaving the factory after December 15, 2021 (outside the scope of the recall).
In addition, the owners also put forward 4 demands, including the immediate recall of all vehicles, the right to give the vehicle that has replaced the motor the right to choose to return or change the car, the extension of the "three-point system" warranty period, and the depreciation compensation for the second-hand car that has been given a certain standard to the owner of the replacement motor.
At present, Mercedes-Benz has not issued a response on this matter.
As for the Failure of the Mercedes-Benz EQC Motor, is it because of a design defect or a manufacturing deviation? In this regard, Zhang Xiang believes that the main reason why the Mercedes-Benz EQC will fail motor is that design defects occur in the process of oil to electricity.
"The cooling system and fuel vehicles of new energy vehicles are different. Mercedes-Benz wanted to reuse the fuel vehicle's system to the greatest extent possible, but space would be limited and problems would arise during the redesign process. Zhang Xiang analyzed that the motor problems encountered by many EQC car owners may belong to the sequelae of "oil to electricity".
He told Radar Finance that every time Mercedes-Benz recalls, it tries to solve the problem at a low cost, such as changing a part instead of the entire system, so that the problem cannot be solved, which is the case at present. "If the three consecutive recalls are not resolved, the car should be discontinued and should stop selling on the market." And for car owners, if several recalls don't resolve the issue, they may ask for a refund. ”
In fact, the Mercedes-Benz EQC has made several recalls because of quality issues. In August 2021, Beijing Benz recalled 796 of its EQC models due to problems with air conditioning condensate that could enter the crew compartment and corrode electronic components.
On November 9 last year, according to overseas media reports, Mercedes-Benz recalled a total of 19,000 EQC models overseas. The reason for the recall is that water ingress into the vehicle may cause the power steering control unit to fail, and there is a safety hazard that the steering system is malfunctioning.
Sales are dismal and the electrification transition is slow
As the automotive industry transitions in the direction of electrification, as the inventor of the automobile, Mercedes-Benz's determination to embrace electrification is self-evident.
In July 2021, Mercedes-Benz announced that its corporate strategy will shift from "electric first" to "full electric", with the goal of providing pure electric models for all market segments in 2022, with a sales share of 50% of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models in 2025, and each model will launch a pure electric version, planning to achieve full electrification and only sell pure electric models in 2030.
To achieve this goal, in December last year, Mercedes-Benz announced that the company had approved a 60 billion euro investment plan for Mercedes-Benz's electrification transformation and autonomous driving research and development.
In the Chinese market, EQC Mercedes-Benz in November 2019 for the first pure electric model, the price range was initially set at 499,800-57.98 million yuan, far exceeding the price range of competitors such as Weilai and Tesla Model Y.
However, in the face of continuous rights protection and successive recalls, EQC's sales so far have been dismal. According to public data, the sales volume of Mercedes-Benz EQC in 2020 is 3863 units, and the sales volume in 2021 is 6098 units, and the cumulative sales volume in two years is only one month's sales of the head new force.
In the case of poor EQC sales, at last year's Guangzhou Auto Show, Mercedes-Benz released EQA and EQB, which are also from oil to electricity. According to the association, EQA sales in November 2021 were 172 vehicles and EQB sales were 232.
Such sales data is obviously not as good as Mercedes-Benz's position in the fuel vehicle market.
As for why Mercedes-Benz has not yet launched a new energy vehicle that can really be sold and word of mouth, Zhang Xiang believes that this reflects the hesitation of Mercedes-Benz's current decision-making level, or the opinions of their senior management are not unified, so the transformation of new energy is particularly slow.
"Why hesitate? Because now the traditional car companies are still in the stage of transformation to electrification, but the new platform investment in pure electric is very large, to do a lot of experiments to verify, the cycle is very long, and the car is made to face fierce competition in the market, not necessarily profitable. Zhang Xiang said that if there is such a small fight as now, Mercedes-Benz's new energy vehicles will be difficult to start.
Zhang Xiang further said that the sales at this stage are not enough to determine the future of Mercedes-Benz's electrification, but in the face of the unstoppable trend of the new energy wave, if the distance left behind is too long, it may be too late to decide to catch up.
Note: This article is the original of Radar Finance (ID: leidacj). Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.