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It's time for the monthly recall of vehicles again! According to the recall announcement issued by the defective Product Management Center of the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration, in November this year, the domestic automobile market issued 12 batches of recall announcements, involving 12 brands, a total of 1.0796 million defective vehicles were recalled, slightly down 0.02% from the same period last year, but up 646.39% from last month.

It is understood that the surge in vehicle recalls this month is mainly due to the mass recalls of Buick and Toyota, which recalled a total of 1051230 vehicles this month. As of November 30th, the total number of recalls in China has exceeded 5.5536 million.

A surge in recalls of new energy vehicles

Recently, China has issued a number of related notices for the safety norms of new energy vehicles, and the recall of defective vehicles is significantly higher than the previous level. Ideal Motor, Star Motor and Tesla all appeared on the list in November, with 11890 recalls from the three brands, an increase of more than 190% over the same period last year.

On November 6th, the ideal car decided to recall 10469 ideal ONE made from November 14, 2019 to June 1, 2020 because the ball pin of the lower arm of the front suspension might be detached when the vehicle was hit by a collision. According to the data of ideal car, the ideal ONE has a total of 97 front suspension collision accidents, including 10 cases in which the ball head of the lower swing arm of the front suspension is protruded from the ball pin.

Tesla recently entered the peak period of recall. Tesla recalled 48442 imported Model S and Model Xs in China in October due to defects in the front and rear suspension. The recall was investigated by the General Administration of Supervision, but Tesla did not recognize the defect, which the company blamed on the improper use of Chinese drivers. However, the US Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced a few days ago that it has launched an investigation into 115000 Tesla vehicles on suspension issues, and Tesla may face a mandatory recall.

On November 27th, Tesla decided to recall 870 imported Model Xs due to the possibility of roof trim falling off while driving. There are also signs of the recall. Tesla recently applied to NHTSA to recall 9537 cars sold in the United States, including roof trim strips that may fall off while driving and faulty bolts on the upper control arm and steering knuckle before connecting.

In addition, the Polar Star car was recalled twice because the vehicle lost power, and the two recalls were less than a month apart. 2021 models of domestic Polar 2 were recalled on November 13th due to inverter failure, and on October 16th due to problems with the power battery control module (BECM) software.

In the past two months, the number of recalls of new energy vehicle brands has increased significantly, including Weimar, Zero run, Polar Star, Tesla, ideal and other brands have recalled their products because of defects. While new energy vehicles have gradually become a market trend, the product quality of new energy vehicles has gradually become the focus of consumers' attention.

Regulatory departments strengthen the supervision of automobile OTA technology recall

On November 25th, the General Office of the State Administration of Market Supervision issued the notice on further strengthening the recall Supervision of Automobile remote upgrade (OTA) Technology (hereinafter referred to as the notice), which pointed out that all OTA were filed with the General Administration of Market Supervision and Administration in accordance with the relevant regulations, which means that no matter the software that repairs defects or is updated daily, they should be filed with the Administration of recall in accordance with the regulations on recall.

The most classic example is the dramatic practice of starting an OTA and then a recall for an ideal car. On November 1st, ideal announced that it would replace the swing arm of the front suspension with a higher release force for the ideal ONE produced before June 1, 2020. However, shortly after the upgrade was released, it caused controversy, and what was supposed to be a "recall" was officially beautified as hardware OTA. On November 6th, ideal issued a letter of apology for the ideal ONE hardware OTA and announced a recall of 10469 ideal ONE electric vehicles on the same day.

It is understood that there are two kinds of OTA at present: one is the SOTA of ordinary software, such as navigation, vehicle entertainment, human-computer interaction, and other software upgrades, and the other is FOTA, that is, firmware upgrades, such as suspension, steering, braking, body control, ADAS-assisted driving and other system updates.

In contrast, the latter is more important, because improper upgrades not only can not solve defects, but also cause new failures, which directly affect the personal and property safety of consumers. However, because the OTA upgrade can significantly improve the recall rate and reduce the recall cost, it has gradually become the main recall measure for automobile companies to deal with software failures.

According to relevant statistics, by 2019, there were 213 recalls involving program or software problems in China, involving 6.8302 million vehicles, of which 79.3% were recalled through OTA upgrades, involving 5.097 million defective vehicles. The large number and opaque effect cast a shadow over OTA.

Therefore, the notice particularly emphasizes that if OTA technical service activities have been implemented since January 1 this year and before the issuance of this notice, producers should put on record before December 31, 2020. if OTA fails to effectively eliminate fault defects or cause new fault defects, producers should take recall measures again.

In a sense, the intervention of the regulatory authorities can effectively solve the hidden recall measures, ensure that vehicles are effectively supervised after upgrading through OTA, so that the problem can be tracked continuously. However, it is also difficult to implement the new policy of OTA. For example, in the case of frequent OTA upgrades, some minor failures may be difficult to effectively identify, and program upgrades are actually very difficult to evaluate and characterize, so the most important thing is to need the cooperation of producers.

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