GAC Aean "lock electricity" black curtain

Text/Leju Finance Jin Wenyu

At the beginning of the independence of the EIAN brand, Gu Huinan, general manager of GAC Eian, once said: "In the future, when everyone thinks of the GAC Eian brand, they think of advanced products and services. ”

But Gu Huinan's expectations may be difficult to achieve in a short period of time.

Recently, on the relevant complaint websites such as the car quality network, the AION S of GAC Aian has received a large number of user complaints. Most of the car owners' problems are concentrated: the manufacturer locked the power on a large number of AION S models without informing the owner and without permission, resulting in a significant reduction in battery life. According to statistics, the models complained by car owners include the 2019 Mei Evo 630, the 2019 Mei 630, and a small number of 2020 Mei 580 models.

In addition to "locking the power", the complaints involved in AION S also include power battery failure, sensor failure, brake system abnormal sound, etc. Battery life defects and problems in product quality have caused many car owners to have a crisis of trust in the GAC Aean brand.

Private "lock the electricity"

GAC Aion S was launched in 2019, which is the second product of GAC Aion and a compact pure electric sedan based on GAC's second-generation pure electric platform GEP, positioning itself in the high-end market, and for the first time using the CATL era 811 battery, the driving assistance level has reached L2.

As a batch of electric vehicles listed earlier, AION S is considered to be a pure electric car with excellent space performance, sufficient interior materials, AI car federation, and the first to reach NEDC with a range of 510 kilometers, with a price of about 210,000 after subsidies, making it very competitive in the domestic market and good sales.

However, while GAC Aean has achieved sales growth and sought to go public, some of its product quality problems are also revealed. Its main model, AION S, has been facing quality problems such as locking power and limiting output power since 2021.

According to the complaint data of the vehicle quality network in 2021, the AION S, the main model of GAC Aian, ranked 5th in the pure tram complaint list, and the problem of the more concentrated complaint is the system upgrade, which is the owner's so-called "power lock" problem after the upgrade.

According to Leju Finance, in 2020, the owners of GAC Aion S experienced a power lock problem, and that lock power was also recognized by the manufacturer, and at that time, the owner was given a 1,000 yuan care package. The reason is that GAC Aion S customer service confirmed that because of the occurrence of poor welding conditions, the battery may be overcharged when charging, affecting the battery life, and the battery FPC needs to be replaced.

Before waiting for the battery to arrive, the manufacturer upgraded the lock on the vehicle, but this is only a temporary processing plan, and after the battery replacement is completed, the previous upgrade will be lifted and the battery life will return to normal levels.

But after a year, AION S made a wrong solution, in order to enhance the safety and durability of the car, GAC Aeon privately upgraded the OTA and locked the power, so that the owner to bear the cost of shortening the mileage, which caused the dissatisfaction of the owners.

A owner of the AION S 2019 Mei Evo 630 complained in October 2021: "In mid-to-late July 2021, GAC Aion Automobile Co., Ltd., without informing customers and with the customer's permission, made a large number of GAC AION models (claiming NEDC mileage of 510KM, Battery capacity of 58.8KWh), through the background OTA upgrade battery management system (BMS), etc., artificially reduce the available capacity of the car power battery (tested by the majority of car owners, from 0-100%, counting the charging loss can only be charged into about 50KWh), while limiting the output power of the car to no more than 60% (before the throttle can be stepped on to more than 90%), claiming that the motor with 135KW power, the actual maximum output power is less than 70KW."

The owner believes that GAC Aeon's secret OTA upgrade method has led to a shrinkage of assets purchased by customers, which is completely unable to meet the technical indicators of public publicity and filing with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. At the same time, it also seriously violates customer privacy and affects customer driving safety, which is very infuriating. And the initial estimate is that tens of thousands of vehicles will be affected.

Although the problem has already fermented in 2021, GAC's EAN side has not paid attention to this problem. By March 2022, there were still complaints about the power lock problem of AION S.

On March 9, a car owner of the AION S 2019 Hyun 630 complained that he bought a car in September 2019, but in the first half of 2020, the manufacturer took the initiative to recall the replacement battery, but until around July 20, 2021, the battery life suddenly decreased by 100 kilometers per day, and the power was also weak.

The staff of the 4s store said that there was indeed a problem after personally testing the car, but they had no choice but to report it to the manufacturer. During the period, the owner of the car asked many times, but the 4s store said that there was no notice above, and the problem had not been solved for nearly a year since March this year.

Quality problems are frequent

Automakers lock the power through "OTA upgrades", mainly in order to reduce the risk of spontaneous combustion of vehicle batteries when the design defects of the battery cannot be solved in the short term. The reason why AION S locks the electricity without permission is related to the frequent spontaneous combustion accidents of the brand's cars.

According to incomplete statistics, AION S has been spontaneously combusted in a small area in Guangzhou for the first time since May 2020, and soon after, spontaneous combustion incidents occurred in Huizhou, Shenzhen, Haikou, Taiyuan and other regions, because of the wide range of frequencies, it was once known as the hottest "king of spontaneous combustion" in new energy models in 2020.

After several "spontaneous combustion" accidents, GAC Aeon chose to privately carry out "OTA upgrade" locking of user vehicles. Gaqi Aeon also said that the purpose of AION S power lock is really to extend battery life and ensure vehicle safety.

However, GAC Aeon's approach is indeed inappropriate, if the manufacturer wants to limit the amount of battery used in the vehicle, it should also explain to the consumer in advance and proceed after obtaining consent. This kind of black-box operation will only cause greater dissatisfaction among consumers.

Judging from the complaint information on the vehicle quality network, in addition to "locking the power", AION S is also involved in power battery failure, sensor failure, brake system abnormal sound and other issues.

On March 8, a car owner of the AION S 2020 charm 630 complained that on January 19, when he was driving a car on the highway, he suddenly stalled and stopped on the main road of the highway, the instrument alarm "electric drive system abnormality", soon the instrument black screen, four wheels of death, very dangerous. After 50 days, the owner of the car received a report from GAC that the battery pack of the vehicle needed to be replaced, and asked what reasons needed to be replaced, and the manufacturer did not give a clear reason.

The owner suspected that GAC Aeon needed to replace the main parts for the quality defects of the major product design of the batch of vehicles, and did not comply with the announcement of the automotive product recall system of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Since the self-use car for more than 1 year, the car has replaced the main components such as the motor, the power battery pack, the running headlights, and the navigation and entertainment central control screen host due to major design quality problems.

Prior to this, a car owner of AION S 2020 Charm 580 complained that the vehicle had an electronic parking and body stability system failure, the automatic parking automatically closed or even automatically accelerated when the fault code was bounced during the vehicle driving, and the fault code would automatically pull up the handbrake when the vehicle was parked. The failure has occurred for half a year, but the owner of the car went to the 4S shop 5 times for repairs without results. And the owner found that on the car quality network, the same model has this failure.

As an important fulcrum of the Group's new energy strategy, GAC Group is committed to building the Aeon brand into its high-end electric vehicle brand. In 2021, GAC Group will promote the mixed reform of GAC Aean, increase its capital and share expansion, and build a new energy vehicle enterprise integrating "research, production and marketing". It can be seen that GAC Group has high hopes for the future of Aeon.

However, while GAC Aean is developing rapidly, if the quality problems of the vehicle itself cannot be properly handled, as well as the shortcomings in the process of providing services after-sales service, it is easy to betray the trust of car owners in the brand, and it is difficult to exchange the owner's recognition of Aeon.

Source: Leju Finance