The China Consumers Association recently released the "Annual Report on the Protection of The Rights and Interests of Chinese Consumers (2021)", which summarizes and sorts out the consumption chaos in key areas. Among them, automobile consumption, which accounts for more household expenditure, has become the hardest hit area for complaints, and the rights and interests of many automobile consumers have been infringed.
Auto safety issues have led to multiple recalls
Auto safety has always been the most important area for consumers, but advances in car-making technology have not yet completely solved the problem of automotive safety. Statistics from the China Consumer Association found that in the past year, some cars have experienced sudden acceleration, flameout, oil leakage, engine noise, and brake steering failure during the driving process. These problems have buried major hidden dangers for the safety of automobile driving, which need to be paid attention to by automobile manufacturers.
In the case of FAW-Volkswagen Audi, it filed a recall plan with the State Administration for Market Regulation in October 2021, recalling some imported and domestically produced vehicles from October 22, 2021, with more than 100,000 units recalled, including some domestically produced A6L 2.0T vehicles.
According to The Brother of TheRond, the reason for the recall is that due to the software cooperation problem of the engine and the transmission control unit of the relevant vehicle, when the vehicle is changed from the first gear to the second gear at a lower speed, if the driver suddenly changes the driving intention to release the accelerator pedal at this time, the "engine stall protection mechanism" will be triggered during the shift, and the speed may suddenly increase by 3-5km/h within 1-2 seconds, which is a safety hazard.
Luxury brands still have car safety issues, not to mention other brands. In the era of fuel vehicles, engines, gearboxes, and chassis have always been the "three major parts" that automakers attach the most importance to, and they are also the core that can best reflect the technical strength. It is precisely because of this that once these "three major pieces" have problems, they will have a major impact on the safety of automobile driving. It is not difficult to imagine that when driving at high speed on the road, the sudden brake steering failure, or the sudden shutdown, even experienced veteran drivers are difficult to control the situation.
There are many new problems with new energy intelligent vehicles
Statistics from the Association of Automobile Manufacturers show that the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China have reached 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units in 2021. It is particularly noteworthy that the market penetration rate of new energy vehicles has reached 13.4%. On the one hand, the ownership of new energy vehicles has risen rapidly, and consumers' acceptance of new energy vehicles is getting higher and higher. On the other hand, the new problems of consumer disputes over new energy intelligent vehicles have increased significantly.
Judging from the complaint cases, the complaints of new energy intelligent vehicles focus on the sudden power outage of the vehicle in motion, the shrinkage of the mileage, the failure of the intelligent driving assistance system and the battery charging failure. And because most of the new energy intelligent vehicles currently on sale with high sales are dominated by new car-making forces, there are also problems such as difficulty in determining responsibility.
For new energy vehicles, power batteries are crucial, but the problem of power battery defects has triggered multiple recalls, with more than 70,000 cars recalled in 2021 alone. For example, in some Volvo XC40s, due to vendor reasons, the microprocessor in the power battery energy control module (BECM) is reset, which may cause the high-voltage battery connection to be disconnected during the road. In extreme cases, power may be lost during the journey, and there is a safety hazard.
There are also some BAIC BJEV EX360 and EU400 pure electric vehicles, due to the consistency difference of some vehicle power battery systems, long-term continuous and frequent fast charging in high temperature environments, which may lead to the deterioration of the performance of individual single battery cells, and in extreme cases, occasional failures will be triggered, causing the risk of power battery fire.
Loss of power during driving, battery fire, these problems are likely to cause serious safety accidents. In contrast, the mileage that has been complained about has shrunk, and the problem is not so serious. In recent years, with the improvement of new energy vehicle manufacturing technology and the acceleration of the research and development process of batteries, the mileage has become longer and longer, and the problem of mileage renewal has been alleviated. For example, the Chevrolet Cruise, Volkswagen ID.4X and other models that Brother Rumble has test-driven have excellent endurance performance, and the endurance calibration is more realistic.
Warm reminder, in the four mileage standards used in new energy vehicles, it is recommended that consumers look at the WLTP endurance results before purchasing a car. Judging from the endurance performance of a series of models, the NEDC mileage used in most new energy vehicles in China is "moisture", which is quite different from the daily driving situation. The WLTP test standard is more stringent, covering low-speed, medium-speed, high-speed, ultra-high-speed road conditions, and the vehicle's gear, weight, resistance, etc. are taken into account, which is more in line with daily driving conditions. As for the EPA, it is more stringent than the test standard of WLTP, but at present, few domestic models will provide this test data, and it is difficult for consumers to find data for reference.
However, if the salesperson provides CLTC range, indicating that the vehicle's endurance performance is excellent, The Dragon Brother suggests that it is almost negligible. The industry generally believes that CLTC is more untrustworthy than NEDC battery life. To sum up simply, the credibility of the range is EPA>wlTP> NEDC>CLTC.
Used car complaints occur frequently, and the price increase has become an "unspoken rule"
Due to the change of consumption concepts and the acceleration of relevant policies, the development of the domestic second-hand car market tends to be healthy, and the second-hand car transaction has obviously been active in recent years. In 2021, 17.585 million used car units were traded on the mainland, an increase of 22.6% year-on-year. Although it is still lagging behind developed countries, the used car market is becoming a new blue ocean for China's automobile consumption.
However, the sales information of second-hand cars is inconsistent with the actual situation, and the frequent quality problems after the second-hand car transaction have become the problems in the development of the second-hand car market. Some consumers reported that after purchasing a second-hand car, it was found that the second-hand car dealer did not fulfill the after-sales service commitment in time, and the vehicle needed to negotiate many times to solve it after the appearance of the vehicle, which greatly consumed the time and money of consumers, making the second-hand car complaints increasing day by day. Therefore, the problem of standardized sales of second-hand cars needs to be solved urgently, otherwise even if the second-hand car restriction is completely cancelled in the future, it will not be able to activate the second-hand car transaction well and improve the efficiency of resource utilization.
It is worth noting that in the past two years, affected by the epidemic, the slowdown in automobile production has also contributed to the emergence of the crooked trend of price increases. The China Consumer Association mentioned that the current way of raising the price to pick up the car is more hidden, not only will the word "mark-up" not appear in the sales agreement, but also do not issue invoices to consumers.
Although consumers who pay attention to the auto market hate this phenomenon, they have to increase prices because they want to pick up their cars early. 2021 is a blockbuster new car year, and many models have received warm attention from consumers, while also making their value rise. According to consumers, before the Land Rover Defender needed to add 50,000 decorations to pick up the car, Toyota Saina increased the price by about 70,000, Mercedes-Benz S increased by more than 100,000 and so on. In addition to these models, many hot models have different degrees of price increases, and the price increases are also different, including license fees, handling fees, decoration fees, etc. Price increases have become the norm. Of course, the final choice is still in the hands of consumers, and the habitual dealer price increase will only damage his own interests.
The emergence of many automobile consumption chaos shows that there are still certain deficiencies in the development of the domestic automobile market. This requires automobile manufacturers to strengthen production quality, improve the level of car manufacturing, and also require automobile dealers to abide by the market order and promote the benign development of automobile consumption. And consumers can not "sit still", but must learn to take up legal weapons to protect their rights and interests. It is believed that with the efforts of all parties, domestic automobile consumption complaints will become less and less.