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On March 15, the annual CCTV 315 party arrived as scheduled in the expectation of many consumers. This day is also a sleepless night for countless public relations companies, fearing that they will not respond in time after being exposed. The product safety and product quality of the automobile industry have always attracted much attention from the market. In the CCTV 315 party over the years, it is also the final program. In 2021, Chang 'an Ford and Dongfeng Infiniti were named by CCTV 315 party due to frequent gearbox failure.

On the contrary, in the past year, the automobile industry also happened a lot of rights protection events, including Euler good cat core change, Mercedes-Benz EQC leakage, etc., I thought this year there will also be car enterprises will be "named," but did not expect to be recruited is electric bicycle, including calf, European school, green energy, Hello, Xinri, Taiwan bell and other enterprises suspected of illegal modification.

The automobile industry has not been "named" by CCTV 315. Has the quality of automobiles reached a new height? In fact, take the new energy automobile market as an example, under the background of soaring sales volume, there are still many new energy owners trapped in the mud of rights protection, and the recent uproar is Weima "lock switch".

March 15, Guangdong 315 party exposure WeiMa "lock electricity". According to a number of car owners feedback said, After maintenance upgrade of their own WeiMa after the battery life reduction, Charging speed slow and other problems, Owners suspect that the official maintenance upgrade for the reason secretly waiting for the vehicle "Lock electricity" operation.

According to the description of Mr. Zheng, the owner of Guangzhou Weima EX5, on April 25,2021, he went to the Weima User Center for maintenance. After maintenance, the mileage of the car was reduced from 350km to 250km. At first, Mr. Zheng thought that the energy consumption was increased due to frequent use of the car air conditioner or his own driving habits, but he found that the actual battery life decreased after multiple charging, which brought great anxiety to Mr. Zheng. In addition to the battery life shrinkage, the charging speed of Weimar EX5 is also significantly slower after maintenance. Mr. Zheng said that it used to take only 1 hour and 15 minutes to fill up quickly, but now it takes two or three hours.

What's more, there are WeiMa owners to provide video to reporters, saying WeiMa EX5 in the middle of the night at two or three o 'clock suspected through OTA lock operation, and the whole process users did not have any operation, nor informed the owner in advance. Therefore, many WeiMa owners began to suspect that their vehicles were secretly "locked" in the name of free maintenance.

Authoritative testing agencies detected these vehicles and found that they did differ from vehicles with normal range. The charging pile of the vehicle involved shows that the electric quantity is 100%, but the actual electric quantity read by the decoder is 89%. Professionals interpret that there is a possibility that the battery capacity of the vehicle involved is artificially lowered. There are two main reasons for this practice: one is to avoid spontaneous combustion, and the other is to reduce the loss ratio of the battery.

What is electricity lock? Public information shows that "lock electricity" contains two concepts, one is that some charging piles such as the State Grid directly indicate that the battery can only be charged to 95% of the SOC(system-level chip), which is a certain restriction on the use of batteries from the outside for safety. The second is to tamper with the key data in BMS(new energy vehicle battery management system), so as to achieve the locking of the battery SOC window, that is, artificially jam the maximum amount of power that the battery can reach, limiting the battery charge and electricity consumption.

Why do manufacturers actively reduce battery capacity? According to the investigation, in recent years, Weimar cars frequently occur spontaneous combustion incidents, which may be the fuse of Weimar's "lock electricity" behavior. According to the Central Radio and Television Station, on January 21 this year, Ms. Ding and Mr. Wang, who live in Haikou, Hainan Province, drove the Weima EX5 rented from a car rental company to Sanya. In the morning, they charged at the hotel charging pile and smoked just 10 minutes after driving out. Mr. Wang said, From hearing the sound to smoke fire, The whole process is also ten seconds, Fortunately is the reaction at that time fast, Immediately stop, Otherwise the consequences are unthinkable.

After the accident, Jiyang District Fire Rescue Brigade of Sanya City issued Fire Accident Identification Letter on February 21, identifying the causes of fire as follows: fire point "power battery"; fire cause "battery failure caused fire", facts confirmed by "interrogation record","on-site investigation record" on-site photos and videos and other evidence. However, Weima does not recognize the fire brigade's accident identification, insisting that its car is fine and believes it was a collision that caused the fire. However, what does the "collision" in the speech refer to as to which appraisal agency made the judgment? There is no explanation for Weimar cars. In addition, Ms. Ding also denied that there was no collision between Weimar EX5 and Weimar EX5 on that day. Photos of the incident also show that the accident vehicle is parked in the middle of the auxiliary road, there are no other vehicles around, and the fire department is unlikely to ignore factors such as car collisions.

Earlier, in October 2020, Weimar was reported to have a fire accident on October 5, October 13 and October 27, respectively. On October 28,2020, WeiMa Automobile filed a recall plan with the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration, recalling 1282 WeiMa electric vehicles and clearly indicating that the accident was caused by battery quality. However, several owners said their vehicles had not been recalled. When the reporter calls WeiMa official whether there is electricity lock behavior, WeiMa customer service said it will not lock the user's vehicle.

Zhang Xiang, an auto industry analyst, said that the main reason for the "lock-in" phenomenon is the immaturity of enterprise battery technology. In the case of battery pack overcharge, that is, charging time is too long, load saturation, the positive and negative electrodes are prone to short-circuit expansion, causing thermal runaway, serious battery explosion may occur, causing spontaneous combustion phenomenon. Zhang Xiang believes that users 'doubts are not without basis, because lowering the battery charging limit can indeed improve charging safety. It is difficult to detect if the vehicle's endurance shrinks and is 'locked', and it is difficult for the third party to obtain direct parameters, and it is difficult for users to protect their rights. The biggest problem now is that the manufacturer has not communicated with the user. If the electricity is locked, how much is locked? If it's not locked, why is the battery life greatly reduced? All of this needs to be made clear to users.

It is for this reason that hundreds of WeiMa car users have been unable to get answers. Is there a safety hazard in this vehicle? How should consumer rights be safeguarded?

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.

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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