AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)02/16 Report--

Weima was caught in a "lock switch" incident and caused collective complaints from consumers due to official indifference. According to the complaint from Black Cat, the number of collective complaints participating in "WeiMa automobile battery has huge safety risk, infringes users 'right to know, and covers up quality defects by reducing battery life" has reached 123. The collective complaint was initiated on February 8 by the net name "Mi Zhou is not surnamed Mi", which summarized the five major problems of WeiMa "electricity lock" in the complaint document: 1. WeiMa automobile battery has serious safety quality defects. Four spontaneous combustion cases have occurred in recent January, which has seriously endangered personal and property safety. 2. WeiMa did not recall the vehicle and replace the safe battery after learning about this matter, but locked the vehicle battery software by deceiving consumers into shop maintenance, resulting in a serious reduction in the battery life of a large number of users. 3. WeiMa long-term false publicity, product life and publicity gap is very large, plus the actual life after locking electricity can only reach 30 to 40% of the publicity. 4. A large number of Weimar users (currently 600) complained that Weimar had not responded for seven months. Since the lawyer's letter was sent on January 10, including complaint 12315, Weimar has not carried out any direct docking and has not provided any effective solutions. 5. After receiving the complaint, WeiMa kept making small moves, violating the regulations of the Quality Supervision Bureau, silently upgrading through remote ota, changing or deleting the user's vehicle data in batches in the middle of the night, creating the illusion of unlocking, but the actual battery life was not improved. At the same time, the charging power is greatly reduced, and the charging time is about 3 times that of its publicity.

In response to the above, the collective complaint initiator "Mi Zhou is not surnamed Mi" put forward relevant demands, including asking Weimar to publicly apologize, publish product defect details, turn off silent OTA function, replace full battery life and safer battery.

In fact, as early as July 2021, there were six feedback complaints from car owners about Weimar's "lock-up" incident. Comprehensive complaints from many owners, WeiMa EX5 in the store maintenance upgrade after the range of serious shrinkage, the actual vehicle life from the original 350km to the current 260km, the owner thinks WeiMa EX5 in the maintenance process was done "hands and feet", that is,"lock electricity".

What is "lock electricity"? "Lock" is to lock the battery power, that is, to achieve the lock on the battery SOC (system-on-chip) window by upgrading and rewriting BMS (new energy vehicle battery management system), and redefine the battery voltage range to limit the battery charge and electricity consumption. For example, the previous 100% power output can only reach 60%, the battery capacity is reduced, and the range is bound to be greatly reduced.

Owners speculate that WeiMa "lock electricity" or related to fire accidents, and "lock electricity" can reduce the probability of electric vehicle fire, its essence is to change the maximum charging voltage of the battery, can effectively reduce most of the spontaneous combustion caused by charging, but not to solve the electric vehicle spontaneous combustion Effective measures, the sacrifice is the cost of car performance and car experience. Up to now, WeiMa has not publicly responded to whether there is a "lock-up" on electric vehicles, and the problem of complaints from owners has not been substantially solved, but many owners pointed out that after upgrading the vehicle system, the charging power has dropped significantly, and the mileage has been significantly reduced, which is an objective existence. In addition, according to the paper news report, after receiving complaints from users, WeiMa car through remote OTA silent upgrade, midnight batch change or delete user car data, creating the illusion of unlocking, but the actual battery life has not improved. Weimar also did not respond to relevant reports.

According to the data, WeiMa Automobile was founded in 2015 and headquartered in Shanghai. The first mass production vehicle, WeiMa EX5, was launched and delivered on September 28,2018, taking the lead in breaking PPT. According to the data, in 2019, the sales volume of Weima was 16,900 vehicles, NIO delivered 20,600 vehicles and Xiaopeng delivered 16,700 vehicles, ranking second among the new force automobile enterprises. In 2020, the sales volume of Weima cars is 22,500, while this year NIO delivers 43,700 vehicles, Xiaopeng delivers 27,000 vehicles and ideally delivers 32,600 vehicles. Weima has fallen out of the top three. After entering 2021, Weima fell behind again. In this year, Xiaopeng delivered 98,200 vehicles, NIO delivered 91,400 vehicles, ideal delivery 90,500 vehicles, Nezha of the second echelon delivered 69,700 vehicles, while Weima delivered 44,200 vehicles in the whole year, second only to zero-running vehicles.

On the first commencement day after the Spring Festival in 2022, Shen Hui issued a "new letter" within the company, which elaborated on Weimar's "way to break the situation" in the next year of this "promising era" and his views on the new energy market, saying that it is only a "warm-up match in the first half" and "far from over". However, it is still unknown when the "second half" of Weimar Automobile will start, at least not yet.

On February 1, the new force automobile enterprises announced the sales volume of the first month as scheduled, among which the delivery volume of Xiaopeng, Ideal, Nezha, NIO and Zero Run cars was 12,900 vehicles, 12,300 vehicles, 11,000 vehicles, 9652 vehicles and 8085 vehicles respectively, or the sales volume did not reach the expectation, and the sales volume of Weima was hidden again. However, retail sales data obtained from the association show that Weimar reached only 2000 units in the first month, of which 790 were EX5, 761 were W6, 644 were E 5 and 5 were EX6 PLUS.

The automobile industry is concerned that, no matter from the perspective of consumers or automobile manufacturers, no one wants problems with their cars and products, but no one can guarantee that the products will not have problems. Since problems occur, they can be treated rationally. Presumably, consumers prefer to see an official responsible attitude rather than any compensation. However, if they are worried that product defects will bring adverse effects to sales and companies, thus ignoring consumer problems, Using certain means to achieve their own goals, in fact, the final cost is often greater, not only the product is affected, but also the company's reputation.

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