A rear-end collision accident has plunged the AEB system into controversy, and it has also made the industry rethink whether the publicity behavior of the intelligent driving system is too rushed, and has misled consumers.
On April 26, a Wenjie M7 collided with a sprinkler truck while driving on the highway in Yuncheng County, Shanxi Province, and the vehicle then caught fire, killing all three people on board.
Image source: Online video
On April 28, Wenjie officially issued a notice about the M7 rear-end collision accident, but was accused by netizens of responding too late.
Bosch urgently clarifies
In the live video that came out, the front left side of the M7 rear-ended the right rear of the sprinkler truck in front, the front cabin and A-pillar were seriously deformed, and then the front of the vehicle began to catch fire, and the fire quickly spread to the whole car.
At the time of the accident, the front and rear door handles of the car did not automatically unlock and open due to the collision, resulting in three people outside the car (two in orange uniforms and one in a black T-shirt) who could only participate in the rescue by smashing the rear window glass, and finally the three people in the car were unfortunately killed.
The model involved is a medium and large SUV under Wenjie, which is jointly built by Cialis and Huawei, of which the vehicle machine and intelligent driving system are provided by Huawei, and the main production is responsible for Cialis. So far, except for a statement issued by Wenjie on the accident, neither Cialis nor Huawei has made an explanation.
According to the statement, the vehicle was traveling at a speed of 115km/h at the time of the accident, the airbag was deployed normally, and the characteristics of the power battery pack were normal. "We are actively cooperating with the local traffic police department to investigate the accident, providing all necessary data to restore the cause of the accident, and providing all possible support to the family," the question said. ”
However, the description of the victims' families differs from the "support provided in every possible way" as promised by the question.
The victim's family has said that the three victims are their husbands, younger brothers and sons, after the accident, Huawei, Wenjie, Cialis and other aspects have not contacted her, they only learned of the situation two hours later, they spoke on the Internet on April 27, and then the article was deleted by the whole network, until April 28, the accident video spread on the Internet, and the M7 rear-end collision incident was also on the hot search, and the statement of the question was delayed.
In the statement of the question, there was no mention of many previous questions from the families of the accident (including why the hidden door handle did not pop up, why AEB failed to activate, etc.), and even directly shirked the responsibility of AEB. The official of Wenjie clearly pointed out that the model involved is the M7 PLUS version of Wenjie. According to public information, this version of the AEB system does not belong to Huawei, but to its suppliers Bosch or Foretek.
The reporter's investigation found that in the whole series of M7, only the MAX intelligent driving version is equipped with Huawei's AEB system, and the rest of the versions are provided by the first-tier supplier Bosch and the second-level supplier Foretek. Among them, Bosch, as a Tier 1 supplier, has a working range of 4-85km/h for AEB in its intelligent driving solution, while Foretek has not announced the working range.
In response, Bosch quickly responded that it was concerned about the recent traffic accident in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, and after investigation, the vehicle involved was not equipped with Bosch intelligent driving system (including AEB).
AEB is over-promoted?
Bosch's denial has once again plunged the AEB system into controversy.
In September 2023, at the launch of the new M7, Yu Chengdong, Chairman of Huawei's Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, announced the launch of Huawei's "Omnidirectional Collision Avoidance System", saying that Huawei's ADS 2.0 intelligent driving system can achieve forward, sideways, and backward active safety, as well as AEB automatic emergency braking at a speed of 90 kilometers per hour.
As an active safety technology, AEB can measure the distance between the vehicle or obstacle in front through radar, and use the data analysis module to compare the measured distance with the alarm distance and the safety distance.
Yu Chengdong also once made a bold statement: "Reversing is safer, and it is difficult to hit it." ”
Two months later, at the Zhijie S7 press conference, Yu Chengdong announced in a high-profile manner that the forward AEB for stationary cars has been upgraded to support emergency braking at a maximum speed of 120km/h, and the working range of the AEB has been extended to 4-130km/h.
This kind of publicity once made Huawei's AEB system one of the important factors for consumers to choose the world of questions and intelligence. These consumers also include the victim's family, and now she asks publicly: "I bought the M7 because it advertises AEB automatic emergency braking and GAEB special-shaped obstacle automatic emergency braking, but when the accident occurs, where do these functions go?"
Some industry insiders analyzed to reporters that Yu Chengdong's description of "emergency braking at a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour" has many prerequisites, first of all, the vehicle needs to be equipped with Huawei's AEB system, and secondly, the data is the conclusion drawn from many tests by the factory test vehicle, the test environment is safer and cleaner than the real public road, so this indicator is not applicable to public roads.
The person added that Huawei's advertised 120 km/h braking is the upper limit of the AEB system, and the company does not indicate the data test environment and success rate when it advertises, even if it can guarantee success at the test site, it cannot guarantee 100% success on public roads, "It is irresponsible to regard the upper limit of the system as the basic level of the system."
In fact, there have long been voices in the market against the over-promotion of AEB.
In November 2023, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors, took the lead in expressing his opinion, "I think 99% of it is fake, and those propaganda are not officially released by the company, but all from small videos." Our people also went to ask, its AEB can't be driven at all, and there are too many cases of misguided braking on the road." He Xiaopeng believes that this kind of propaganda is to treat users as guinea pigs, "At present, when the industry talks about AEB, it mainly talks about longitudinal AEB, and when it is triggered, the speed should be within 60 kilometers per hour in most cases." If the speed is too high, once the brake is mistaken, it will be a huge shock to the user, which is simply unacceptable."
After "matching" with Yu Chengdong many times, He Xiaopeng ended the AEB debate with a Weibo, saying that he would expand the AEB function through OTA for Xiaopeng to experience the user experience.
Nowadays, the behavior of Wenjie and Bosch on the AEB system has made consumers realize that the seemingly eye-catching publicity is only the result of the company's "best-looking" value, not the standard configuration. Jia Xinguang, an automobile analyst, told reporters that at present, consumers have less understanding of intelligent driving and system configuration of automobiles, and they are still mainly listening to the propaganda of manufacturers. With the changes in the market environment, corporate propaganda is becoming more and more exaggerated, and words such as "most", "first" and "first" are often used, which will mislead consumers' judgment.
Technology "deporates" chaos
With the development of technology, the intelligent application of automobiles has gradually been "deified".
According to the data, the "Classification of Automobile Driving Automation" currently implemented by the mainland refers to the international SAE standard and divides the intelligent driving system into 0-5 levels. Among them, level 1-2 belong to assisted driving, and level 3 can reach "conditional automatic driving", which is considered to touch the threshold of automatic driving, and the real autonomous driving technology in the strict sense must reach level 4 "advanced automatic driving".
At present, due to the policy conditions are still not open to L3 autonomous driving, various car companies will use the names of "L2+", "L2.999" or "the first intelligent driving below L3" to introduce their own intelligent products, superimposed by the media promotional videos and touting, consumers are particularly confident in the current intelligent driving technology of new energy vehicle companies.
In other words, the intelligent driving systems installed on the market are not "automatic driving systems" in the real sense, but "assisted driving systems". At the same time, the person responsible for intelligent driving accidents below L2 is the driver, and car companies can still easily evade responsibility.
Auto analyst Zhong Shi told reporters that with the intensification of intelligent competition in the Chinese market, car companies began to seek different ways to promote their own intelligent driving, but after exaggerating the publicity, consumers will misunderstand this, "although car companies have been emphasizing to consider consumers, but did not expect that the consequences of 'boasting' are borne by consumers themselves."
Intelligent driving accidents are frequent
Since 2023, there have been many traffic accidents caused by the failure of autonomous driving or intelligent driving systems.
In November 2023, a video of an M5 crashing into the rear car and riding on the roof of the other car while reversing circulated online. Subsequently, the official statement of Wenjie said that after background data analysis and confirmation with the test drive user, the user mistakenly took the accelerator pedal as the brake pedal and caused the accident, but fortunately, the accident did not cause any injuries, and the reversing AEB was not enabled to prevent it at that time.
In December of the same year, a rear-end collision accident occurred in a Wenjie M9, the front cabin cover of the rear-ended bus was warped and deformed, the headlights were suspected to have been hit, and the rear of the bus was not much damaged. It is reported that the vehicle involved in the accident was a test drive provided to the media, and before the collision, the vehicle had enabled AEB deceleration and steering avoidance, but because the driver was not familiar with the vehicle, he chose to actively intervene, resulting in the collision.
On April 14, 2024, a Wenjie M9 suddenly crashed into the middle guardrail on the highway and was involved in a traffic accident. The dashcam of the rear vehicle shows that the original Wenjie M9 is in a normal driving state, and there is obvious evasion behavior when encountering a large truck, and then the vehicle is suspected of suddenly losing control and crashing directly into the guardrail. Subsequently, the official said that during the accident, the functions of the vehicle were displayed normally, and the user misoperated the steering wheel and caused the intelligent driving to exit.
Zhong Shi told reporters that the current assisted driving can only be assisted, and the initiative of life should be in their own hands, rather than pinned on AEB; at the same time, car companies should take warning, pay attention to the "deification" of intelligent driving, and should respect consumers' right to know.