The source of this article: Times Finance Author: Yang Delin Intern He Qing
WM Motors was suspected of "locking electricity" to cause the sudden reduction in vehicle endurance is still fermenting.
"Now I don't even dare to come out to communicate, at least make a statement." On February 17, Mr. Zhou, the representative of the owner of the rights protection car, told Times Finance that since sending the lawyer's letter, WM Motors has not carried out any direct docking and has not provided any effective solution.
According to public reports, in January this year, 173 Weima car owners jointly sent a lawyer's letter to WM Motors, questioning whether the vehicle was "locked" by WM without informing the owner, and asked WM Motor to respond to whether there was a quality problem in the power battery on the grounds that the actual cruising range was greatly attenuated.
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On February 23, Times Finance interviewed WM Motors on the "locking" questions and follow-up measures reflected by the owner, but as of press time, there was no response.
The name is "maintenance", but it is actually secretly locked?
A free maintenance, but let Mr. Zhou embark on a long road to rights protection.
"In May last year, I received a call from them saying that it was free maintenance, plus the rearview mirror of the car was abnormal, I went into the store to do maintenance, and did not mention the 'lock the power' to me the whole time, but there was a BMS upgrade in the final work order. BMS is the vehicle battery management system, that is, the system responsible for implementing the power lock function. Mr. Zhou told Times Finance.
After this maintenance, Mr. Zhou felt that the endurance of his car had dropped significantly. "This car has a lot of false standards at the beginning, and the car with a range of 400 kilometers is about 250 kilometers before it is locked, not to mention the lock behind, the car can only run 200 to 180 kilometers."
"Locked electricity" is the power that locks the battery. According to public information, "locking power" contains two concepts, one of which is that some charging piles such as the State Grid directly state that the battery can only be charged to 95% of the apparent SOC (State of Charge), which is due to the safety of making certain restrictions on the use of the battery from the outside. The second is the battery internal lock SOC, by tampering with the key data in the BMS (new energy vehicle battery management system), so as to achieve the lock of the battery level SOC (system level chip) window, that is, artificially jam the maximum amount of power that the battery can achieve, limiting the amount of charge and power consumption of the battery. The "locking" makes the battery capacity decrease, which further leads to the reduction of the cruising range of new energy vehicles. According to Mr. Zhou, WM manufacturers may belong to the second kind of "lock electricity" situation.
After discovering that the suspected "locking electricity" situation led to a discount on the battery life, Mr. Zhou defended his rights several times and found that there were many Wei carriage owners who had the same encounter. "I'm not the only one who has found that the battery life has shrunk, and now the two rights protection groups have more than 500 users, and the number of joint rights protection car owners is also rising."
According to Mr. Zhou's understanding, at the end of last year, the most concentrated and largest batch of suspected "power locking" operations appeared. At that time, WM Automobile launched the "New Year User Premium" campaign, publicizing the random selection of 18,888 lucky users, providing comprehensive vehicle inspection and 200 yuan Jingdong card. However, after the vehicle inspection returned, this batch of "lucky ones" also found that the endurance dropped significantly, and questioned that they were fooled into going to the store for "locking the electricity" operation.
Image source/image courtesy of respondent
Mr. Ma, the owner of the car who participated in the New Year's Day activity, told Times Finance that his vehicle also had a "power lock" situation after doing daily maintenance. According to Mr. Ma, "In June last year, the vehicle did daily maintenance, and later found that in the case of full power, there was kinetic energy recovery at the beginning of the road, which was not there before." Another obvious manifestation is that the endurance shrinkage is serious, "for example, in the winter, in the same period of the year, the full power ran 200km, the battery can still have about 20% of the electricity, and in the winter of 21 years, it ran to 180km, and there was about 10% left." ”
According to Mr. Ma, after he found that the vehicle had reduced battery life and kinetic energy recovery in the case of full power, there were also other owners in the group of car owners who reflected the abnormal use of the vehicle battery. According to Mr. Ma, "Since New Year's Day this year, a large number of riders have been found to be saying that they have been locked by WM, and most of the people who have been locked are EX5 models." ”
What makes car owners even more dissatisfied is that WM manufacturers refuse to admit the "lock electricity" problem reflected in the former, and have not taken relevant measures to solve it. According to the recording of the communication meeting with the dealer provided by Mr. Zhou, the relevant representative of the dealer said that he had no decision-making power and could only sort out the user's appeal and feedback it to WM Motors. However, after the talks, WM Motors also did not contact users to dock.
On February 21, Times Finance contacted the Dash Bank WM after-sales service center that communicated with Mr. Zhou, but the relevant person in the center did not reply to the owner's question about the locking of the power, but only said that he was "unaware".
Source/Respondent Still spontaneously combusts after "locking the electricity"? The owner shouted: 315 is not seen or scattered
"The essence of this matter is that WM makes up for and covers up its battery safety defects by infringing on the interests of users." Mr. Zhou speculated that behind the above operation, it may be related to the previous fire accidents of WM Motors. It is reported that after changing the maximum charging voltage of the battery, the probability of electric vehicle fire can be reduced to a certain extent.
According to public reports, in late 2020, Weima had four consecutive fire accidents in 35 days. Subsequently, in December last year, a number of WM EX5 vehicles in Zhengzhou, Hainan and other places were exposed to fire.
"Since December last year, five cars have been burned in a row." Mr. Zhou contacted one of the owners of the fire accident and learned that the owner had entered the store for maintenance in August, but checked the previous charging records, and after the maintenance, the charging could not exceed the 45-degree battery capacity. In their view, the car may have been "locked" before, but it still failed to avoid fire.
For the aforementioned fire accident, WM officials did not publicly respond, nor did they disclose the specific cause of the accident. "Users reflect relevant doubts through customer service phones, stores, official forums, etc., but they are ignored, and the posts posted on the official forums are deleted for the first time; the official after-sales group finds that someone is discussing the incident, and the group is immediately dissolved." The user had no choice but to communicate, and only sent a lawyer's letter, and the result is still no reply. Mr. Zhou told Times Finance.
It is reported that at present, many rights protection users have publicly shouted at WM Motors and its founder Shen Hui on Weibo, "We have prepared comprehensive evidence, and 315 is not seen or scattered." ”
"The demands of rights protection car owners are the most basic, WM Motors recalls and replaces safe and sufficient batteries, safety is no risk of spontaneous combustion; in full, it is 80% of the daily running endurance, that is, 320 kilometers." Mr. Zhou said, "This plan is one of the user upgrade plans proposed by WM Motors in 19 years, so the technology is completely feasible and the program is fully mature." ”
Lawyer's Letter Source/Interviewee Image to Prepare for Long-Term Litigation
After there was no way to communicate, Mr. Zhou hoped to protect his rights and interests through legal channels.
"The contempt for users and the trampling on consumer trust have completely made us abandon the illusion of solving this matter through communication." Our goal in the short term is to send it to 315, in the long run, is to prepare for long-term litigation, bite to the death, and make their own contributions to regulating China's new energy market with a steady stream of actions. Mr. Zhou said helplessly.
On February 21, Times Finance contacted Dou Shihan, a lawyer at Beijing Yingke Law Firm entrusted by the aforementioned 173 WM users, who said that if the facts of the user's reaction are true, WM Motors adopts "power locking" in order to avoid product quality defects, that is, to reduce the safety risk of the car by significantly reducing the battery capacity through software, avoiding the existence of not informing consumers of the true situation of the car, and reducing the battery power of the car by deceiving consumers to upgrade the car software. In order to alleviate or reduce the probability of safety incidents caused by the production design defects of the automobile itself, WM Motors violated the provisions of Articles 8 and 20 of the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law, and was suspected of infringing the user's right to know and suspected of fraud.
According to the second paragraph of Article 40 of the Product Quality Law of the People's Republic of China, if the product sold does not meet the product standards indicated on the product or its packaging, the seller shall be responsible for repairing, replacing or returning the product; if the consumer who purchased the product causes losses, the seller shall compensate for the loss. In its view, as an influential automobile company, if the problems that users react to are true, then WM Automobile should actively assume the obligations and responsibilities of car recalls, replacement of qualified batteries, and provision of solutions, rather than sacrificing the interests of users in exchange for corporate profits.
"Based on the infringement of WM Motor, 173 co-branded users asked WM Motor to publicly apologize to the client for the power locking behavior, and actively communicated with the user about compensation, clarified the compensation labeling and implementation plan, and satisfied each user." Dou Shihan said.
In addition, Zhu Yongping, director of Guangdong Datong Law Firm, said in an interview with Times Finance that if the user's reaction is true, WM Motor infringes on the user's right to know and the right to make independent choices. According to Article 8 of the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law, "Consumers have the right to know the true situation of the goods they purchase or use or the services they receive", and Article 9 "Consumers have the right to choose goods or services independently." Consumers have the right to independently choose the business operators that provide goods or services, independently choose the variety of goods or service methods, and independently decide to purchase or not to purchase any kind of goods, and to accept or not accept any service. Consumers have the right to compare, identify and select when independently selecting goods or services, and when users choose and use certain goods or services, they have a clear understanding of the true situation of the goods and services, and independently choose whether to accept the goods and services, if WM Motors "locks the electricity" without the user's knowledge, it infringes the user's right to know and the right to choose independently.
"Compared with traditional cars, it is relatively more difficult for new energy vehicles to protect their rights." Zhu Yongping said that new energy vehicles will involve more high-tech technologies such as battery design and intelligent driving system design. The data used to reflect whether the battery is safe and whether the system design is safe is often in the hands of the merchant, such as the merchant deliberately conceals the data or carries out malicious tampering, then for the division of responsibility for the problems caused by the above scientific and technological technology, as ordinary users are difficult to complete the proof in rights protection, according to the current basic principle of "who advocates, who proves" in the current civil law, if the burden of proof cannot be completed, the risk of losing the lawsuit will be borne.
Zhu Yongping suggested that the current Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law has corresponding provisions on the user's right to know and the operator's responsibility for false publicity, but in view of the fact that new energy vehicles are modern emerging industries, the user's lack of understanding of new technologies, and the familiarity and mastery of businesses' use of scientific and technological technologies and automobile data, the law can appropriately adjust the burden of proof for accidents caused by new technologies.