"Listing is delivery, delivery is volume." Xiaomi Auto has delivered a good report card at the beginning. Since the first delivery on April 3 this year, the popularity of Xiaomi cars has been rising, and the delivery volume exceeded 10,000 units in June.
In the face of strong growth momentum, Xiaomi Auto confidently stated that "deliveries will continue to exceed 10,000 in July" and "at least 100,000 units will be delivered in 2024, and strive to reach 120,000 units".
As an emerging car brand, Xiaomi Auto has been able to gain market recognition, which is undoubtedly a success. But in addition to the superficial sales data, there are also many problems surrounding Xiaomi cars. At present, a difficult problem in front of Xiaomi Auto is that with the delivery of new cars, the quality of Xiaomi Auto is also facing a greater test.
By the way, there are more negative news about Xiaomi cars now, and this article is to make a general review, and at the same time, it also urges Xiaomi to encourage and change it.
The chip failure rate is high and unqualified?
According to the automotive Sankei report, a technician who left Xiaomi revealed that at present, the Xiaomi SU7 is equipped with silicon carbide power chips from Infineon alone, and there have been 7 failures. Based on a rough estimate of about 30,000 chips delivered, the failure rate is already as high as 1 in 5,000.
Generally speaking, the defective rate and misstep rate of automotive-grade chips in the automotive industry are less than 1 in 1 million. The failure rate of Xiaomi's automotive chips has been as high as 1/500, which is equivalent to not meeting the requirements of the vehicle specification level. To a certain extent, it may cause potential safety hazards to driving.
In May, a car owner in Leiyang, Hunan Province had just mentioned the Xiaomi SU7 for less than a month, and encountered a thrilling scene of brake failure. During the parking process of the owner, the vehicle brake fails and loses the sense of damping, the alarm sound is emitted in the car, and the car screen displays 4 abnormal information such as "braking system failure", "automatic parking failure" and "abnormal hill assist function".
Wang Hua, general manager of the public relations department of Xiaomi Group, responded to this, saying, "It is indeed a software misidentification, and we have fixed this small probability incident";
"Because the braking system switches between primary and secondary, the original pressure value in the cylinder of the main brake is 0, but it does not mean that all braking force is lost.
This is not the first time this type of incident has occurred. In April, a car owner in Chengdu, Sichuan Province had a malfunction while driving a Xiaomi SU7, and the low-voltage system was abnormal, and the car could not be started.
Less than a month after picking up the car, there was a nightmare of brake failure, and it is hard to imagine how helpless the owner was at that time. Combined with the data of frequent accidents and chip failure rate, it seems that the accident is not a small probability event as the official said.
According to the relevant report, Infineon insiders said that the failure event does exist, Infineon should be innocent, and the power chip will eventually enter the MCU (microcontroller), which is a test of the overall design ability of the MCU whether Xiaomi is self-developed or outsourced.
There is no doubt that the quality of Xiaomi's automotive chips is being questioned, but whether this is the supplier's pot or Xiaomi's own pot has not yet reached a specific conclusion.
Brake failure, defective workmanship?
Since its inception, the Xiaomi SU7 has been selling on high performance, but its braking system has not stood up to the test. Previously, some bloggers drove Xiaomi SU7 to the track to test the performance, but SU7 suddenly lost control on the track, which caught people off guard.
Deep digging found that the front brake pads of the Xiaomi SU7 were too thin and were worn out when driving on the track. This begs the question, how can such a high-performance car be equipped with such thin brake pads? A car that claims to accelerate to 100 kilometers in 2 seconds, is the quality of the brake pads like this?
There is more than one question about Xiaomi brake pads. According to the speed partner test, the Xiaomi SU7 brake pads were basically gone on the third lap of the track. At 60 km/h, there is no feedback when applying the brakes. After pulling the Xiaomi SU7 to the repair shop to disassemble it, it was found that the wire of the wheel speed sensor may be too close to the brake disc and has completely melted. If this is taken into account before the vehicle is assembled, can such incidents be avoided?
After replacing the brake pads with new ones, the blogger tested them again the next day, and the Xiaomi SU7 performed well on the track. But just as the blogger was about to return home, the vehicle's fault light came on. The vehicle began to leak oil, and repairs were made to find that the piston sealants of the brake calipers had melted.
Both incidents point to problems with the Xiaomi SU7's braking system. For this high-performance model, such a level of craftsmanship obviously needs to be improved.
As for whether Xiaomi SU7 is suitable for running on the track, the official has said that Xiaomi SU7 is a high-performance luxury technology sedan for urban use, please do not try to drive on the track easily. So whether Xiaomi's emphasis on high performance involves excessive publicity, I believe everyone has their own judgment in their hearts. Also, is the safety and reliability of the vehicle more important than the emphasis on performance?
Front windshield causing signal problems?
Recently, Xiaomi SU7 owners revealed that the front windshield was defective, resulting in the inability to GPS positioning. For a while, the topic of Xiaomi SU7 front windshield signal isolation rushed to the hot search.
The official also attaches great importance to this matter. It is rumored that Xiaomi Auto After-sales has given two solutions: one is to replace the front windshield free of charge in the name of "navigation experience technology upgrade"; The second is to install a signal amplification receiver at ETC.
It has to be said that both of these options cost a lot of money. If the glass doesn't work, change the glass, and add an amplifier if the signal doesn't work!
Lei Jun, the founder, said that Xiaomi SU7 is the world's first three-layer silver-plated glass, filling the gap in the automotive industry for 140 years. In other words, the Xiaomi SU7 was born out of nowhere, solving the problem of heat insulation for a hundred years, and there should be applause here.
However, not long after, Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei's terminal BU, dissed, saying that the silver plating of the front windshield has a shielding effect on the electromagnetic field, which will eventually lead to a bad signal.
Of course, this inexplicable dirty mine army did not accept it, and he said in public that "there is absolutely no problem" and "I don't believe in the real test".
It was also mentioned in the official interaction with netizens that the three layers of silver plating on the front windshield of Xiaomi SU7 will not affect the mobile phone signal.
But this time, SU7 owners really encountered a bad signal. Xiaomi replaced the front windshield in the name of upgrading the navigation experience, which no one believes if it is not empty. Yu Chengdong in one sentence. At present, Xiaomi Auto has not responded to the front glass problem, so let's let the bullets fly for a while.
Charging bugs and imperfect after-sales
In April, a Xiaomi SU7 MAX owner said on the Internet, "Xiaomi cars really have a bunch of problems, and they can't be charged." According to the owner's description, the owner has a home charging pile, and when the Xiaomi SU7 MAX is charged for the second time, the APP shows that the charging pile cannot be found, and there is no Bluetooth list.
The owner consulted the after-sales service, and the after-sales said that he didn't know, and finally the owner asked the master who installed the charging pile to solve the problem. The owner also said that the vehicle can be charged, but the automatic cover opening function is not used.
In May, a Xiaomi SU7 owner in Xiamen, Fujian Province picked up the car on the same day, and there was a failure after only 39 kilometers, and the central control system showed that "the drive system is faulty and cannot be put into gear". After the vehicle broke down, the owner immediately contacted customer service. The official was also very atmospheric, and immediately arranged a return service for the car owner.
The compulsory traffic insurance, license fees, transportation costs, etc. involved in the process of returning the car are all borne by Xiaomi Auto.
However, the owner of the car is a senior rice fan, and he didn't want to return the car, so he asked customer service if he could change the car. However, the customer service said that because the vehicle failure needs to be returned to the factory for analysis, it cannot be repaired temporarily, so it cannot provide replacement service.
The owner did not agree with the plan and insisted on changing the car. The customer service said that the car owner can be replaced, and the loss caused by the vehicle will also be compensated to the car owner, but because there are too many orders, it cannot be delivered in a short time, and the car owner needs to wait.
As soon as the incident came out, many people applauded the service of Xiaomi cars that were only returned and not repaired, and provided quasi-new cars for car owners at any cost. But whether this will really benefit car owners remains to be studied. After all, car owners need to spend a lot of time and cost to wait for a new car, and no one can guarantee whether the new car will have similar problems again.
From the manufacturer's point of view, the owner can try not to return the car if he does not return the car, because the cost of returning the car is too high. However, Xiaomi Auto solves the problem by returning the car, which also shows that the after-sales service system of Xiaomi Auto is not perfect, and when there is a problem with the vehicle, it cannot be troubled in the first time and provide maintenance services.
At present, Xiaomi cars are indeed very popular and selling well. But along with this "splashing wealth", there are also various problems of Xiaomi Automobile, such as the need to increase production capacity, the questioning of chips, and the imperfect service system. Although officials have previously emphasized that failures are probabilistic events, when the frequency of failures increases, who will believe that it is a matter of probability?
Quality problems exposed by a new brand are inevitable. The bad thing is not that the problem happens, but that the problem does not face it. Consumers are more concerned about whether Xiaomi Auto can solve possible problems in a timely and effective manner, and whether it can continue to provide high-quality services.
Failure of any vehicle while driving is not a trivial problem, and do not link life safety to probability. Quality and after-sales service is a measure of whether a car is qualified, the former "tape measure" model has high appearance and cost performance, but in the end can not escape the fate of being eliminated by the market.
On the road to quality, Xiaomi Auto has a long way to go. Finally, I would like to ask everyone, will you choose to buy Xiaomi SU7?
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Legal adviser
Beijing Weiheng (Fuzhou) Law Firm, Lai Chenglong, lawyer