On December 14, the topic of "Xiaopeng Automobile collecting 430,000 face photos in 6 months" was on Weibo's hot search, triggering heated discussions.
"International Finance News" reporter inquired about the sky eye inspection found that a few days ago, Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Service Co., Ltd. added an administrative punishment announcement, the punishment is to infringe on the personal dignity of consumers, infringe on consumers' personal freedom or infringe on consumers' personal information to be protected according to law, a total fine of 100,000 yuan.
Xiaopeng Automobile told reporters that "the face recognition camera equipment has been dismantled, and the uploaded face photos have also been deleted." However, Xiaopeng did not respond to the question of whether other local subsidiaries also used this equipment.
More than 430,000 photos were collected in violation of the law
It is reported that the specific background of the penalty is that in 2019, Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Co., Ltd., the business parent company of Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales service Company, signed the "Framework Contract for passenger flow monitoring projects in Xiaopeng Automobile stores" with a company, and the contract stipulated that Xiaopeng Automobile purchased store passenger flow monitoring project services from March 2019.
After Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. purchased the above services, it can obtain facial recognition data through the portrait recognition camera equipment installed in its stores, and can analyze the number of people entering the store, the proportion of men and women, and age analysis.
Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales and Service Company purchased a total of 22 camera equipment with face recognition functions and installed them in its stores, involving 5 directly operated stores and 2 franchised stores.
Xiaopeng Automobile Shanghai Store Zuo Yu photo
From January to June this year, the above-mentioned cameras collected and uploaded 431623 face photos, which did not explicitly or inform consumers of the purpose of collection and use without obtaining the consent of consumers.
On December 14, "Xiaopeng Automobile collected 430,000 face photos in 6 months" appeared on Weibo hot search, causing widespread discussion among netizens, many netizens left a message saying that the calculation of a photo was only about 2 cents, and the punishment was still too low.
In addition, just in July this year, Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales and Service Company was just fined 20,000 yuan for using other vehicles other than rail transit vehicles, public buses and trams, taxis and freight taxis to set up operational outdoor advertisements.
The equipment of the store involved has been dismantled
The reporter learned that as of the incident, Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales service Company has dismantled the face recognition camera equipment in the above stores.
As for face data, Xiaopeng Automobile related personnel said in an interview with the "International Finance News" reporter that face data is collected by third-party software providers, and Xiaopeng Automobile does not store such data, but only collects aggregate data such as the total number of visits. At present, the uploaded face photos have also been deleted.
"There are many merchants punished by the Municipal Supervision Bureau this time, but due to the above reasons, Xiaopeng Automobile has received a lighter punishment, and the fine amount is lower among the enterprises that have been punished this time." Xiaopeng Motors said.
It is worth noting that the purchase of store passenger flow monitoring project services is not only Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Service Company, but its parent company Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Co., Ltd., which is wholly owned by Xiaopeng Automobile and includes Xiaopeng Automobile sales companies across the country, such as Wuhan, Wuxi, Chongqing, Xiamen, Ningbo...
Have these local subsidiaries also adopted passenger flow monitoring services? In this regard, Xiaopeng Automobile did not reply to this.
This phenomenon of illegal collection of customer information is not uncommon, this year's "3 · 15", CCTV exposed the Kohler, BMW and other stores through the installation of cameras, and in the case of consumers without feeling, illegal collection of consumer face data.
It is reported that since the beginning of this year, Xiaopeng Automobile has achieved remarkable sales results. As of November, it has achieved a single monthly delivery of more than 10,000 yuan for three consecutive months, and has also become the only new energy vehicle brand in "Wei Xiaoli" that has sold more than 15,000 units in a single month, an increase of 54% month-on-month and a year-on-year increase of 270%.
With the large increase in sales, in the third quarter of this year, Xiaopeng Automobile achieved revenue of 5.72 billion yuan, an increase of 187.4% year-on-year and an increase of 52.1% from the previous quarter. This is slightly higher than the previous market expectation of 5.2 billion yuan.
However, in terms of net loss, Xiaopeng Automobile's value in the third quarter was 1.59 billion yuan, compared with a net loss of 1.15 billion yuan in the same period last year and nearly 1.2 billion yuan in the previous quarter, and the loss margin was further expanded and higher than the market expectation of 1.177 billion yuan.
Xiaopeng Automobile's increase in revenue was also mainly due to the increase in R&D expenses and sales, general and administrative expenses, which were mainly due to the increase in marketing, promotion and advertising expenses to support automobile sales, as well as the expansion of the sales network and related personnel costs, and the increase in sales commissions for franchise stores.
Reporter Xiao Yisi
Edited by Wang Ke
Editor-in-Charge Sun Xiao