At 8:00 p.m. on March 15, 2022, the much-anticipated "315" party arrived as scheduled. As one of the grand events that consumers are most concerned about, the "315" party is like a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of major enterprises, and if you are not careful, you will smash the signboard and lose your job.
Every year, "315" will revolve around the "food, clothing, housing and transportation" that is closely related to the people, and this year, in addition to exposing the disgusting "foot" sauerkraut, medical beauty chaos, live broadcast traps, stall electric donkeys, it seems that there is no relevant report on the automotive industry. This made a group of friends who squatted in front of the TV early to eat melon a little disappointed, and at the same time made all the car public relations people breathe a sigh of relief.
Dodged the "315", but it does not mean that the chaos in China's auto market is no longer there.
According to the "2021 National Consumer Association Organization Acceptance of Complaints Analysis Report" released by the China Consumer Association, automobile and parts complaints ranked in the top five in commodity complaints, with as many as 41,624 complaints, second only to food and clothing, ranking third in the complaint list, and the number of complaints was more than 7,000 more than last year, up 19.28% year-on-year.
According to data from the State Administration for Market Regulation, in 2021, the mainland implemented a total of 23 car recalls, involving 8.736 million vehicles. Among them, 59 recalls of new energy vehicles were implemented, involving 830,000 vehicles, an increase of 75.9% year-on-year, accounting for 5.9% of the total number of recalls in the whole year.
Tanuki for Prince
Euler is an independent new energy brand under Great Wall Motor, released in September 2018, positioned in a new generation of urban life vehicles, with the goal of becoming "the world's most loved woman car brand".
However, the "stealing chips" storm that occurred at the end of last year pushed this brand to the cusp of public opinion.
At that time, a good cat owner who was a programmer accidentally found that Qualcomm's new professional in-vehicle intelligent service platform and Qualcomm chip with an 8-core processor were replaced by Intel's quad-core "low-end" chip.
The two chips have great differences in terms of the number of CPU cores, manufacturing processes and GPU computing power. And according to the data provided by "Electronic Engineering Album", the official price of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 is $80-100, while the old Intel AtomX5 E3940 chip released in 2016 is only $34.
This situation of "tanuki for prince" caused an uproar among Euler car owners, and many car owners formed a rights protection group, demanding that Euler replace the chip or even triple the voice of the car.
Wei ma becomes a "dangerous" horse
Last Year 12, WM Motor officially launched a campaign called "Welcome New Year User Premium". In the new year, receiving a "surprise" from WM Motors, many car owners were overjoyed. However, after experiencing the free car inspection, the battery that could be charged with more than 70 degrees of electricity can now only be charged to 48 degrees, and the mileage is also tens of kilometers shorter than before.
At the beginning of this year, more than 500 Wei carriage owners found that after a very ordinary OTA online upgrade, the mileage was suddenly "cut". In the name of welfare, the official act of privately locking up electricity was made public.
"Locking power", as the name suggests, is the power supply of the lock battery, that is, by upgrading and rewriting the BMS (new energy vehicle battery management system) to lock the battery power SOC (system level chip) window, redefine the voltage range of the battery, to limit the upper charging limit and power consumption of the battery, improve the safe and redundant capacity of the battery, reduce the probability of thermal runaway, and prevent the spontaneous combustion of the vehicle. However, the direct negative consequence is that the charging speed is slower and the mileage is reduced.
This is not only reminiscent of the 5 spontaneous combustion incidents of Weima electric vehicles that occurred last year in 4 days. It is the responsibility of manufacturers to provide safe and reliable products, not at the expense of users. Unfortunately, as of now, the manufacturer has not had any positive response.
Domineering side "leaky" Mercedes
Someone else leaks oil, I leak coolant! The Mercedes-Benz, which only pits the rich, has successfully caused public outrage. Recently, 245 Mercedes-Benz EQC car owners once again issued a joint statement, saying that they resolutely disagreed with Beijing Benz's recall arrangement on EQC, and put forward 7 questions and 4 appeals to Mercedes-Benz officials, requiring manufacturers to immediately recall and solve the vehicle problem. It is understood that this is the third time since 2022 that EQC car owners have taken the form of public statement to protect their rights.
The EQC is a medium-sized pure electric SUV launched by Mercedes-Benz in 2019, which is the transformation of Mercedes-Benz's electric strategy, but since its listing, EQC has not only sluggish sales, but also frequent complaints about quality. According to the data of the vehicle quality network, the complaints about EQC in 2021 mainly focus on antifreeze leakage and drive motor failure.
What is even more infuriating is Mercedes-Benz's arrogant resolution attitude, one does not recognize, the other does not respond, and the recall is also insincere.
On February 18, Beijing Benz filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulation, "From August 15, 2022, the recall of some EQC electric vehicles with production dates from November 30, 2018 to December 15, 2021, a total of 10,104 units." ”
As we all know, the manufacturing deviation of the electric drive module leads to the possible lack of sealing in the cooling system in the electric drive module, resulting in coolant leakage. If the coolant penetrates into the motor slightly, the insulation resistance value of the high-voltage system may be reduced after long-term use, and the vehicle may not be started in extreme cases, which is a safety hazard.
These 10,104 vehicles are almost the total sales of EQC in China. Some rights protection owners said: "Mercedes-Benz issued an EQC recall notice on February 18, but it will not recall the vehicle until August 15, and if we continue to drive a defective car for 6 months, we are playing with the life safety of all EQC owners, and we firmly disagree!" This is the group anger of the 245 rights protection car owners at the beginning of this paragraph.
EQC's product defect is in the final analysis is the Mercedes-Benz brand's impetuous attitude towards new energy vehicles, in the face of the wave of electrification transformation, oil to electricity is indeed fast and economical, and money is also fast. But without enough attention to new technologies, the market and word of mouth will give irreparable response.
It is worth noting that the recall of mercedes-Benz EQC is only a microcosm of Mercedes-Benz's large-scale recalls in recent years. Between 2018 and 2021, the total number of cars recalled by Mercedes-Benz in the Chinese auto market climbed from less than 200,000 to 2.78 million. Among them, in 2020, Mercedes-Benz recalled 17 times in the domestic automobile market due to engine oil leakage and other issues, becoming the automobile brand with the largest number of recalls on record, with a total of 820,000 recalled vehicles.
In fact, these are just the tip of the iceberg. Cars are commodities that consumers need to pay a high price to own them, so the regulation of the auto industry must be more stringent. Dodging the "315" does not mean that major car companies can relax their vigilance, China's auto industry to go steady and far,the premise must be to grasp the quality control, do a good job, consumers are naturally willing to pay, the market environment will flourish.