[EpochTimesAugust192021]A car accident a few days ago made Weilai Automobile rushed into hot searches. After that, the media reported a set of data. Weilai Automobile has delivered its first model since June 2018. So far, at least 13 traffic accidents have occurred in the car. So, what is the safety performance of NIO, a leader in the field of new energy vehicles in China?
In addition, some people believe that this is the result of the CCP’s “Great Leap Forward” in the electric vehicle industry in order to achieve “curve overtaking”. So, will this series of accidents impact China’s new energy vehicle market? Let’s talk about this topic today.
Let’s first look at this traffic accident a few days ago. At 2 pm on August 12, 31-year-old mainland entrepreneur Lin Wenqin drove a Weilai ES8 car. After the autopilot function was enabled, a rear-end collision occurred on the Shenhai Expressway. The vehicle was severely damaged and Lin Wenqin himself died unfortunately.
According to Lu media reports, the accident vehicle may first hit a cone on the side of the road, and then hit a working engineering vehicle. According to the information derived from the “Beijing News” Shell Finance and Economics, the car owner only experienced one rapid acceleration during the entire driving process, and there was no rapid deceleration. It can basically be determined that the car owner did not take any intervention measures when the accident occurred. Did not step on the brake pedal, this may be related to the driver’s assisted driving function turned on by the owner.
However, as to whether the accident was caused by NIO’s NOP pilot assistance system, NIO said that it needs to wait for the final confirmation of the investigation results.
The Weilai ES8 that was involved in the accident was driven by pure electric power. It was Weilai’s first mass-produced sales model and the current flagship model. It was produced by Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been many traffic accidents in Weilai. In May, a Weilai ES8 was also involved in a traffic accident on Jianguomen Inner Street, Beijing. The front of the vehicle was seriously damaged. Fortunately, there were no casualties.
On July 30, a Weilai EC6 in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, caught fire and burned after hitting a stone pier. The owner was unfortunately killed. Weilai EC6, a pure electric coupe SUV launched by Weilai in July last year, is also Weilai’s third mass-produced model.
In the face of a series of accidents, everyone may ask, does the safety performance of Weilai Auto pass? Is the self-driving function reliable?
After frequent accidents, Weilai emphasized to many media that Weilai’s NOP is not autonomous driving, but only serves as an auxiliary driving role. Weilai’s NOP function is called “Navigate on Pilot”. Weilai describes it on its official website. This NOP function combines navigation system, high-precision map and automatic assisted driving system. This automatic assisted driving system is developed by Wei from The main research and development, equipped with the world‘s leading Mobileye Eye Q4 autopilot chip, supports more than 20 assisted driving functions.
Last September, during the Beijing International Auto Show, NIO launched the NOP “Navigation Assist Function”. At that time, Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, once organized a rider event at Weilai Center in Zhongguancun, Beijing. He introduced NOP to Weilai Automobile owners. There may be more permissions given to the car, allowing the car to automatically take over the driving according to the navigation distance.
In the previous publicity, Weilai Automobile also mentioned that the birth of NOP is the only system in the world that can realize the automatic driving assistance function according to the navigation route after Tesla.
In fact, Weilai ES8 is still at the L2 level of autonomous driving. According to the definition of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), autonomous driving is divided into six levels, L0-L5. Only L4 or above can start to get rid of human intervention. The industry also recognizes that L4 or above is true autonomous driving, and L4 or below is called assisted driving. Only after the realization of L4 autonomous driving, the responsibility for causing traffic accidents will be the responsibility of vehicles and car companies.
False propaganda was criticized
Although the so-called “automatic driving” systems on the market currently only have the function of “assisted driving”, in terms of propaganda, companies often weaken “assistance” and highlight “automatic”.
On Weilai’s official website, “Weilai Autopilot” is written in large letters, but at the end of the page, there is a line of light-colored small letters that says “Weilai Autopilot System is only for assisting driving. It cannot completely replace the driver’s control.”
In addition, Shen Fei, vice president of Weilai, once said on Weibo, “With the help of automatic assisted driving, you can safely eat and drive while driving.” This also promotes that Weilai’s assisted driving function can “free your hands.” “. However, the related Weibo content has also been deleted.
However, the phrase “free your hands” should be really attractive to some car owners. A few days ago, there was a car owner of an ideal car who uploaded a video of driving while lying down. Then, the ideal official Weibo posted a post denying this operation and reminding the car to use the driving assistance system in the correct way.
In fact, it is not just Weilai. In order to sell vehicles, many car companies often use terms such as “L2 level driverless” and “L3 level driverless” in their publicity, omitting the word “assistance”, which is misleading. Owner.
Moreover, it is not just that there is moisture in the propaganda of autonomous driving, some car companies have also been complained by consumers about problems with other performances of vehicles, which also makes people question the true quality of mainland new energy vehicles. A Shenzhen owner who bought FAW-Volkswagen’s new Magotan model stated that the manufacturer’s claim of “56 kilometers of pure electric cruising range” actually means “even if the vehicle is automatically powered off after being fully charged, the pure electric cruising range displayed on the dashboard is only about 44 kilometers. .”
According to the China Consumers Association, in addition to the “water injection” of the cruising range, the main complaints of new energy vehicles in 2020 include: charging speed and publicity are not consistent; battery quality problems are prominent; transmission abnormal noise, frustration, and power loss are more problems. Many; after-sales service level is not high. In March, the Chinese Communist Party’s official media also issued an article criticizing various problems in the current new energy automobile industry, especially false propaganda, indicator water injection, and “excessive false fire” and so on.
Speaking of “excessive false fire”, from public data, we can see that there are more than 400 companies in China’s new energy automobile industry, and competition is fierce. In March, Xiaomi just announced its participation in official car manufacturing. , Why do so many companies want to get a share of the pie? This is related to the industry support policies of the Chinese Communist government.
Some people may know that there is a market value as high as 500 billion Hong Kong dollars, second only to BYD’s second-largest car company, but so far has not sold a mass-produced model, this company is Evergrande. According to Evergrande’s 2020 performance report, 98.79% of revenue comes from medical beauty and health management, and only 1.21% comes from new energy vehicles.
New energy vehicles “Great Leap Forward”
Evergrande Motors, which has not sold a mass-produced car, its stock price has risen more than 10 times in the past 12 months, and the company has raised billions of dollars in funding. At present, the market value of Evergrande’s new energy vehicles is US$87 billion, which is higher than the two major auto giants, Ford and General Motors. So, why is there such a strange phenomenon?
The German “Business Daily” once published a review article called “Chinas großer Sprung” (Chinas großer Sprung). The article stated that no country in the world has issued huge subsidies and devoted all efforts to support the electric vehicle industry like China. .
According to statistics from the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in the past 10 years, the Chinese government has subsidized the new energy vehicle industry more than US$100 billion. In addition to financial subsidies, the CCP also provides more preferential treatment for new energy vehicles, such as license plate support, unlimited odd and even numbers on the road, and personal purchase subsidies. This should be very attractive to consumers. Take Beijing as an example. If you want to buy a car but can’t get the license plate number, you have to press the odd and even number of the license plate on the road. In addition, there are also preferential treatments for enterprises to occupy land and taxes.
For example, Youth Automobile, which declared bankruptcy in November, received a subsidy of 118 million yuan in 2017, as well as various preferential treatments for mineral resources and taxation. In addition, it also received a new technology industrial development zone covering an area of more than 300 acres, but it has never been Put into production.
According to statistics from the “Wall Street Journal”, there are more than 400 new energy vehicle manufacturers in China, including 58 zombie car companies, and a bubble has emerged in China’s new energy vehicle industry.
After 10 years of development of the “Great Leap Forward”, the authorities have recently begun to tighten policies in the “Great Leap Forward” style. This has put car companies that have long been highly dependent on subsidies and neglecting quality into a dilemma. Car companies have to rely on bribery to officials to obtain Subsidy for survival.
The mainland media once reported that a former official of a new energy vehicle data center in Shanghai was exposed to accept bribes of 250,000 yuan. The bribers included 15 companies including Geely Automobile, BYD, and SAIC Passenger Cars, involving almost all major Chinese companies. New energy car companies.
Stealing Technology for Overtaking in Curves
The Chinese Communist Party is vigorously developing new energy vehicles for the purpose of “overtaking in curves.” I remember that in July last year, Xi Jinping emphasized once again during his inspection in Jilin, “We must seize opportunities, vigorously develop strategic emerging industries, and achieve overtaking in curves.”
The Voice of America mentioned in its post at the end of last year that the CCP tried to surpass the traditional automotive powerhouses of Europe, the United States, and Japan in electric vehicles, for which it invested huge subsidies in the new energy vehicle industry. Some US officials have warned that China’s subsidy policy will put a lot of pressure on the low-end market of electric vehicles. Once China starts exporting, it will be difficult for other countries to compete with it.
The data shows that in 2020, the global sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 3.124 million, an increase of 41% year-on-year, the European market accounted for 43.8%, the Chinese market accounted for 40.7%, and the cumulative sales volume was 1.271 million. From January to July, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles in China was 1.229 million units, a year-on-year increase of 210.2%, which is close to last year’s full-year sales.
The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2030, China will maintain an overwhelming advantage in global electric vehicle sales, and China’s international market share of electric vehicles may reach 57%.
In addition, the United States is also worried that the CCP will use reverse engineering to steal technology from American cars. “Reverse engineering” refers to deriving the design principles of the product through the analysis of the finished product. Since foreign auto brands must establish factories in China through joint ventures, China has long been criticized for obtaining foreign intellectual property rights through “sino-foreign joint ventures” through improper means. In addition, in February of this year, the Director of the Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of the United States also rarely stated in public that the theft of American aircraft technology and electric vehicle technology is the two focus of China’s espionage work.
We see that in the development of new energy vehicles, China is likely to quickly become a major manufacturing and sales country through corners and overtaking. However, in terms of technology, there is still a way to go compared with the powers of Europe, America and Japan. .
Planning and writing: Institute of Finance, Business and Economics
Editing: Songs
Producer: Wen Jing
Financial and Business World: http://bit.ly/3hvUfr7
Editor in charge: Lian Shuhua
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