When mentioning Buick, we think of the keywords of American, luxury and comfort for the first time, but looking back at the history of the Buick brand in the past 120 years, you will find that its brand DNA not only has a pure American gene, but also "safety" is the cornerstone of the product.
For example, turn signals are now an integral part of the car composition, but more than eighty years ago the concept of turn signals was not available in cars, until 1938, GM engineers first invented the rear turn signal, and in 1940 extended the turn signal to the headlight position, and then slowly optimized over time, the various shapes of the turn signals we see on the market today appeared.
For example, after the three-point seat belt was patented, people on the market at that time did not accept this "alternative seat belt", and people were generally hostile to it, and even called it an anti-human and useless design. But in the eyes of automotive engineers, the invention of the three-point seat belt is undoubtedly one of the greatest inventions in the history of automotive safety, and Buick is also the first car company in the world to be equipped with a three-point seat belt as standard.
Pulling back the clock back to the 21st century, how is Buick, which has made security its brand DNA, doing today?
Passive safety is not only the body structure, but also the air inside the car
The so-called passive safety refers to the protection of passengers and pedestrians in the vehicle after a collision. What has to be mentioned here is the crash test, and the most important thing in the crash test is undoubtedly the body structure.
The body structure is not as simple as it seems on the surface, first of all, it is not to say that the harder the frame, the better, if the hardness is simply considered, the role of the force is mutual, then the probability of injury to the people in the car will be greater when the collision occurs. Of course, too soft is not suitable, the body shape becomes too large, will seriously squeeze the crew compartment, causing great harm to the driver and passengers. So there needs to be a balance in between, using high-strength or ultra-high-strength steel in key parts of the body, and needs to consider tensile resistance, that is, it can't be too brittle. In addition, the surface has a certain buffer as much as possible as an energy absorption.
Engineers should consider weight, the way the body skeleton is connected, the optimization of the deformation structure of the vehicle in the event of a collision, and energy absorption.
Here we have to mention Buick's "BFI integrated body", which uses computer finite element model technology to design and analyze the performance of the body by establishing more than 3 million finite element units, and then optimize the connection between the body frame and the deformation structure of the vehicle when the collision occurs.
A number of beams densely arranged at the bottom of the car, together with the longitudinal beams, form a solid "cage"body structure, providing adequate safety protection for the crew compartment. In addition, it includes a large number of high-strength materials, taking Buick Encore Plus as an example, its body high-strength steel accounted for up to 75%, and the use of ultra-high-strength steel (yield strength of 1500Mpa) reached 13%, which were located in key places such as body A-pillar, B-pillar, driver's foot guard plate and so on.
There is also a knowledge point, that is, the dummy in the car in the crash test, the national standard safety test has its own process and standard, this set is mostly for the normal sitting posture, in a state of safety constraint dummy, and most of these dummies are based on the adult body type standards as a reference.
However, in the real car environment, there will certainly be a situation where the occupants deviate from the normal sitting posture and the children do not ride in accordance with the requirements of the safe ride, Buick specially introduced an off-the-seat crash test link for this point, simulating the collision test of children and adults kneeling, sitting crookedly, unconstrained riding, etc., and testing the collision of child dummies and female dummies of different ages, as far as possible to provide a safe car environment for the occupants of the car.
Of course, passive safety is not limited to the protection of people inside the car, but also the safety of pedestrians outside the car. Launched in 2009, the new generation of LaCrosse took the lead in using aluminum in the bumper and hood, although the cost of aluminum alloy material is higher than steel, but the former is much lighter in weight, and the energy absorption effect is better, and the damage to pedestrians in the event of a collision is also lower than that of steel.
In order to slow down the impact more, in addition to working the source of the material, Buick is also equipped with a pedestrian collision protection system, in short, it can instantly bounce the hood up when a collision is detected, to avoid the car from causing greater damage to pedestrians, such as Buick's Regal and LaCrosse are all standard systems. However, no matter how much the collision is mitigated, it is not safer not to have a collision.
Therefore, Buick also equipped many of its models with pedestrian collision warning system and active brake safety system, through the front of the radar or camera to monitor the situation ahead, once the pedestrian or obstacle is found in the car will be warned to remind the driver to slow down the brake, and even take the initiative to brake when necessary. At present, this function has been covered on most of Buick's models.
After talking about the hard indicator of collision, there is also a point that is easy to be ignored by consumers is the "soft" indicator of air quality in the car. In the past few years, it has also been frequently exposed that some car companies' new cars have excessive formaldehyde and large odors, which eventually lead to carcinogenic or other diseases. Although we cannot consider whether these cases are directly related to the air quality in the car, there is no doubt that the dizziness caused by long-term riding and the harm caused to the body are beyond doubt, especially if there are elderly people and children at home, and it is necessary to pay special attention to this.
At the beginning of product production and manufacturing, Buick has selected high-standard environmentally friendly interior materials and environmental protection processes to reduce toxic and harmful gases such as benzene and formaldehyde from the source. For upholstery, chemical residues are reduced by optimizing reagent formulations and increasing the washing process and baking time.
In the top lining and the sponge fabric in the seat, the use of smaller odor ultra-purified sponge instead of the traditional composite sponge, in addition to air purification also includes AQS air quality control system, negative ion air purification system, nano-scale anti-PM2.5 air conditioning filter, etc., in general, in the Buick car, at least the user does not have to play the role of human flesh formaldehyde removal machine.
In 2018, in the first batch of evaluations of the "China Automotive Health Index (C-AHI)" sponsored by the China Academy of Automotive Engineering, Buick GL8 stood out among the 8 products participating in the evaluation and won the only "five-star" evaluation of the year. In 2020, the Buick Regal GS 28T Premium won the highest "highest" score of the double five stars of the "China Automotive Health Index (C-AHI)" that year, ranking "first" in the sampling vehicle.
Therefore, whether a car company has a conscience or not is not manifested in the outside, more often it is in the place where consumers can't see, and fundamentally improving vehicle quality and safety is the right direction for the industry.
In addition, in the past two years, automotive intelligent technology has been rapidly developed, and the importance of active safety systems has become more prominent, which can avoid collisions from the source. For example, adaptive cruise, lane keeping, collision warning, automatic parking, etc., these functions are not uncommon today, but as early as 6 years ago, Buick Veyron introduced these intelligent safety features into the mid-level car market, to know that in 2015, most of these functions are only equipped with first-class models, and now, Buick is a large-scale popularization of these functions to the entry-level mid-level car.
In the wave of electrification, battery safety is also the focus of Buick's attention
At the same time as the rapid development of electrification, the terrifying shadow of "spontaneous combustion, fire and explosion" of new energy vehicles has also been accompanied by it. Nowadays, power battery safety has become one of the important factors that consumers need to consider when buying electric vehicles, and Buick's safety concept naturally includes new energy vehicles.
On the vibration test of the power battery, our national standard is 3 hours, but Buick's own standard is 29 hours, more than 9 times more than the national standard, and in the vibration experiment, the national standard does not need to do "charge and discharge and temperature alternation".
And Buick's new energy vehicles are specially developed for the safety standards of new energy vehicles, including steel pallet design with stiffeners, sealing that meets the IP67 rating, etc. The high-voltage connectors on new energy vehicles meet the IP67B protection level, and the models that meet the protection level mean that there is no danger to touch with their fingers (of course, even if they are idle, don't die), and at the same time, all high-voltage circuits are designed with fuses to achieve line overload protection.
Even after the collision, Buick new energy vehicles can also meet the "voltage safety evaluation", "electric energy safety evaluation", "physical protection safety evaluation", "load insulation resistance evaluation" four requirements, you know, the current national standard requirements only need to meet one of them.
Kanche said
Let's think rationally, probably for most users, most of the time, or even the entire life cycle of the car is "not used" the safety configuration mentioned above, from another point of view, Buick in the user is difficult to intuitively perceive the safety performance of so much energy is really "worth it"? As long as you can smoothly pass the national standard safety performance test, happy and happy to pursue the "sixty long years, more waste" is not comfortable?
In the era without turn signals, everyone turned and changed lanes either by hand or by roar, and no one felt that there was a problem, because in that era everyone was like this, but Buick made a breakthrough in continuous exploration;
Few people really pay attention to the air quality in the car, and even many users attribute the odor in the car to "they should open the window for ventilation", but when encountering the "surprise test", Buick's model can always rank among the best in the same level;
In the era of rapid development of electrification, the national standard safety system for power batteries is slowly being built, and many test systems may not be perfect, so Buick will give itself "add difficulty" and strictly demand itself with almost harsh tests...
Obviously, the requirements for safety performance from the brand Buick are not to be a passing student, but to be an excellent student.
Whether it is active safety or passive safety, whether it is a "hard" indicator of collision or a "soft" indicator of the air in the car, Buick pursues a concept of "global safety", because only by doing better safety can it be prevented.