Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Yang Delin
The WM auto "lock electric door" incident is still fermenting.
On the evening of March 14, at the Guangdong 3.15 party, WM Motors was named. According to the owner of the interview, the purchased WM new energy vehicle, after experiencing the maintenance and upgrading of the brand-authorized 4S store, there was a phenomenon of insufficient "endurance" to varying degrees, and the owners suspected that the vehicle was secretly "locked" by the merchant.
The video also showed that three cars suspected of "locking the electricity" were sent to a third-party testing agency, and the test results showed that the vehicles had the possibility of deliberately reducing the battery capacity.
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According to times finance and economics previously reported, a number of car owners reflected that without their knowledge, Weima was suspected of "locking the power" operation on the vehicle in the name of free maintenance, so that its charging speed became slower and the endurance was sharply reduced. However, WM has not responded to this matter and has not taken measures to resolve it.
On March 14, Times Finance once again interviewed WM Motors on issues such as "locking the electricity", but there was no response as of press time.
The battery life is halved, and the owner suspects that the power is "locked"?
On March 14, Mr. Zhou revealed to Times Finance that after he found that the vehicle was suspected of being "locked", on February 20 this year, he received a call from the WM 4S store again to invite him to enter the store for testing, but the test results given were not "locked".
According to Mr. Zhou, "I even cooperated with their requirements, entered the store to do a test, the funny thing is that my 400-kilometer car can only run 200 kilometers, but the store said that my battery health is 96%, and there is no locking, which is completely inconsistent with common sense and is insulting the intelligence of consumers." ”
In Mr. Zhou's view, the after-sales testing process in February this year was completely closed and opaque, and the actual testing items arranged were very limited. According to Mr. Zhou, the items he inspected when he entered the store included chassis inspection, front warehouse inspection, road test (actually not carried out), battery health and health inspection and battery air tightness inspection. The store also claimed that they did not have the ability to detect whether the power was locked. The matter that I was appealing to had nothing to do with him letting me enter the store for testing. ”
Coincidentally, a number of wei horse-drawn carriage owners also had the problem of reduced battery life, and the time center broke out after the free inspection activity of "New Year's Eve user premium" at the end of last year. At this point, more Weima car friends have opened the road to defend their rights, and on January 10 this year, 173 car friends sent a lawyer's letter to WM Motors.
Image source/image courtesy of respondent
According to Mr. Ma, the owner of the car who participated in the "New Year's Eve User Premium" activity, he revealed to Times Finance on March 14, "In February, early March this year, and on March 14, WM after-sales called me and asked to enter the store to do battery balancing, but I did not go because of time reasons." ”
According to Mr. Ma, at present, the battery life of his car has rebounded, and the kinetic energy recovery has weakened under the condition of full power, but there is still a situation of kinetic energy recovery. Mr. Ma also said that in the case of parking the car and no one, the vehicle should not have appeared to start the record of the driving recorder, but now the driving recorder in his car has appeared in the middle of the night and during the day, "The driving recorder that comes with WM Car is not a parking monitoring function, but in the case of the vehicle stopping and no one is in the car, the car driving recorder has a record of a certain period of time, and everyone questions that WM started the recorder when it was quietly upgraded remotely, and there was a video record." ”
"WM has never acknowledged the power lock, nor has it communicated with the owner and provided a solution, and the people in the 4S shop said on the phone that the battery life will be improved, but they do not recognize the power lock." Mr. Ma said. Mr. Zhou also said that at present, the situation of locking the electricity in his vehicle has not changed, and WM and dealers have not replied to themselves.
According to a video provided by Mr. Zhou, a sales person told the owner that the battery used by WM before was a well-known power battery factory in China, but it was locked for a generation, not all of them were locked, and the W6 was not locked.
On March 14, Times Finance also contacted the Beijing Weima 4S store again to inquire about the suspected "locked electricity", and the staff replied "I haven't heard of it, I don't know".
Correspondingly, Shen Hui, the founder, chairman and CEO of WM Motor, has recently been quite active on Weibo, not only frequently commenting on the rise in oil prices, but also paying attention to the research and development of automatic driving and the high endurance of electric vehicles. On the first working day after the Spring Festival, it also released the "Weima Family Book", which said that it would strengthen user operation and service capabilities in multiple dimensions and attach importance to the delivery of future user experience. However, in the comment area of the book, some users commented that "after participating in the summer testing activities, the mileage of my car was greatly reduced", and the comment area showed that "inappropriate remarks have been filtered, and some comments are not displayed for the time being".
Artificially reducing the battery capacity?
It is worth noting that in the film of WM Motors being named at the Guangdong "3.15" party, it is shown that three cars suspected of "locking electricity" were sent to a third-party testing agency, and the test results showed that "we have compared, and these three WM EX5s have the possibility of deliberately reducing the battery capacity." ”
According to the inspection report, the car with normal mileage and the car sent for inspection, the minimum value of the SOC is 20%, although the display of the two vehicles is 100% when it is full, but the data read by the detection agency by using the decoder shows that the actual power of the vehicle sent for inspection is only 89%, and the maximum difference is about 6-7 degrees.
But the testing agency also said, "Locking the electricity is the consumer's statement, and from our professional and technical point of view, the car factory has made some restrictions." "One of these restrictions is that it is possible to prevent spontaneous combustion, and the other is that the discharge should not be less than 20%, which is to reduce the loss rate as much as possible during the warranty period of the protective battery."
Previously, people in the power battery engineering industry had said that measures such as limiting the voltage of the power battery and reducing the charging and discharging speed could indeed reduce the probability of thermal runaway and avoid the recall.
According to public reports, since late September 2020, Weima has been exposed to four fire incidents in 35 days; in December 2021, Weima has been exposed to three fire accidents in Hainan, Zhengzhou and other places in four consecutive days. It is worth mentioning that in October 2020, WM announced a total recall of 1282 EX5 models, the reason for the recall is that "the battery cell supplier mixed with impurities in the production process, resulting in abnormal lithium analysis in the battery, and in extreme cases, it can lead to a short circuit of the battery, trigger the thermal runaway of the power battery and generate the risk of fire, which is a safety hazard."
In addition to the shortening of the cruising range, WM has also been complained by the owner of a series of quality control problems such as the braking system, the poor workmanship of the vehicle, the abnormal sound, the caton of the car and the air leakage of the body. According to the incomplete statistics of Times Finance, there are currently 156 complaints about WM Motors on the car quality network platform, and 301 complaints about "WM" on the black cat platform.
Image source/car quality network screenshot
In terms of market performance, data show that in December 2021, WM Motor delivered 5062 new cars, the number of insurance vehicles in January this year was 2685, and WM delivered 3311 vehicles in February, compared with the delivery of 15114 vehicles in the fourth quarter of last year, the number of deliveries in the first two months of this year showed a certain decline.
"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." Dou Shihan, a lawyer at Beijing Yingke Law Firm who was previously entrusted by 173 WM users, told Times Finance.