Upstream journalist Yan Wei
Editor/Xiang Jiaqing
Do you know what a defective car is? Which was the first car company in mainland China to initiate a recall?
On March 10, the Chongqing Municipal Consumer Commission, together with the Beibei District Market Supervision Bureau, the Chongqing Defective Product Management Center and other units, launched the 2022 3.15 International Consumer Rights Day "Consumer Education Classroom into The Campus" publicity activity at the Chongqing Beibei Vocational Education Center, and the experts of the Chongqing Defective Product Management Center conducted interactive Q&A with the teachers and students of the school.
Yang Rentong, Chongqing Defective Product Management Center, introduced that due to design, manufacturing, identification and other reasons, automobiles are common in a certain batch, model or category of automotive products, and the unreasonable danger that endangers the safety of people and property is a defective vehicle.
"In the past two years, the car recall triggered by the Takata airbag incident has attracted much attention, involving the world's top ten automakers, affecting at least 17 million cars." Yang Rentong said that in recent years, among the proportion of recalls, European cars account for the largest proportion, reaching 44%.
Yang Rentong also said that since 2021, the recall of independent brands has set a record for the most in the calendar year, with 33 recall announcements and 40 batches of recalls, involving 30 independent brand enterprises, about 2.0466 million vehicles, accounting for 23.4% of the total recall. Among them, SAIC-GM-Wuling recalled 1.437 million vehicles, which is the first recall after the implementation of the Regulations on the Administration of Motor Vehicle Emission Recalls.
"With the explosive growth of OTAs (Remote Vehicle Upgrade Technology) for automakers, OTAs are becoming a new type of recall, with a total of 351 OTA upgrades reported, involving 34.24 million vehicles." Yang Rentong said.
The upstream news reporter learned that recently, the State Administration of Market Supervision Defective Product Management Center released a new batch of vehicle recall information, 33097 vehicles, involving Kia, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other brands.
For example, some Mercedes-Benz imported S-Class vehicles from June 21, 2021 to November 8, 2021, and some imported S-Class vehicles from June 21, 2021 to November 8, 2021, due to software problems in the control unit of the communication module, may cause the voice connection to not be established during emergency calls or the emergency call function cannot be used, resulting in related rescue delays and potential safety hazards.
In this regard, Mercedes-Benz (China) Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. and Beijing Benz Automobile Co., Ltd. will upgrade the communication module software for vehicles within the scope of the recall free of charge through the remote upgrade (OTA) technology of the car, and users can eliminate safety hazards without going to the store.
According to the recall data released by the State Administration for Market Supervision, a total of 14 recall announcements were issued from January to February this year, involving 13 car companies involving FAW-Volkswagen, Beijing Benz, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz (China), Chery, SAIC-GM-Wuling, FAW Toyota, GAC Toyota, FAW, Jiangsu Kowloon, Dongfeng and Changan Mazda, with a total of 40 recalled models, totaling 1.589 million vehicles.