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Investigation Results of NIO ES8 Spontaneous Combustion Released
On the evening of April 30th, NIO released an explanation for the spontaneous combustion of ES8 in Xi’an on April 22nd, claiming that the accident vehicle had suffered a serious impact on the chassis before being sent for repair, causing extensive deformation of the left rear shell of the power battery pack and cooling plate. Under the compressed state, the internal structure of the battery pack short-circuited after a period of time, ultimately leading to a fire.
Due to the heated discussion among car owners, NIO quickly responded. On May 1st, NIO CTO Huang Chendong issued a “QA on Battery Pack Safety”. On May 2nd, NIO Vice President of Service and Operation, Wang Zhenglin, on behalf of NIO, announced the “Action Plan for Further Ensuring the Safety of Power Batteries”.
NIO stated that it had learned from this accident and decided to take the following measures to further ensure the safety of user’s power batteries:
1. Strengthen Emergency Response Mechanism: If you have experienced a significant chassis bump during daily driving or have experienced a chassis bump before, for safety’s sake, please contact your confreers or call 4009996699 NIO service hotline immediately. NIO service team members will arrive at the scene in a timely manner for professional detection.
2. Add a Separate Work Item to Inspect the Bottom Plate of the Battery Pack: Starting today, regardless of the reasons for return to the factory, whenever the vehicle enters the shop for maintenance or repair, a separate work item of lifting the vehicle up and inspecting the bottom plate of the battery pack will be added, in addition to the previously-required appearance inspection of the bottom of the battery pack in the regular maintenance operation specifications.
3. Strengthen the Inspection Process of Battery Pack Bottom Plate When Swapping or Charging Batteries: At present, every time a vehicle enters the station for swapping batteries, we manually inspect the battery pack bottom plate and comprehensively check the electrical performance of the battery. In the future, we will further strengthen the battery pack inspection process in the battery swapping and charging services, and add necessary technical assistance.
4. Free Replacement of Battery Packs with Safety Hazards: If the battery pack has been impacted before and it is found to have a safety hazard, we will replace it with the same specification of the free battery pack and dispose of the original battery pack.
5. Conduct fire drills to strengthen safety awareness: We regularly organize emergency response drills involving service teams and partners to strengthen employee awareness of fire safety and emergency response capabilities. At the same time, NIO will also work with local firefighting and rescue units to improve emergency response capabilities.
Quick comment: Although the ES8 fire incident reflects NIO’s carelessness in the detection process of accidents, NIO’s positive response not only dispels users’ doubts about the safety of NIO’s batteries, but also quickly proposes improvement measures to avoid recurrence of such spontaneous combustion incidents. NIO deserves praise. In comparison, Tesla, where is your analysis report on spontaneous combustion incidents?
NIO ES6/ES8 Subsidy Plan Released
On April 30th, to enable more ES6 users to enjoy the benefits of the 2019 new energy subsidy policy, NIO launched an ES6 transitional price guarantee plan.
Please refer to the specific subsidy plan for ES6/ES8 car purchase in the following figure:
Quick comment: The 2019 NIO car purchasing subsidy plan is finally out. For ES6 users, if you place an order before June 30, 2019, and obtain license plates before December 31, you can enjoy the national subsidy during the transitional period. In addition, the first commemorative edition can also enjoy local subsidies, with the difference covered by NIO. Although the intensity of the transitional price guarantee plan launched by NIO this time is still somewhat lower than that in 2018, it is enough to show NIO’s sincerity. However, the subsidized price of 70 kWh battery version of ES6 Standard Edition is exactly 328,000 yuan. Is NIO following the footsteps of the Idean ONE?
Tesla Announces $2 Billion Financing Plan
On May 2nd, Tesla announced that it had submitted an application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise up to $2 billion, including issuing 2.72 million shares of stock (worth $650 million) and $1.35 billion in convertible bonds.
The next day, Tesla decided to increase the amount of this fundraising operation. Tesla announced that the number of ordinary shares publicly issued will increase from 2.72 million to 3.09 million, at a price of $243 per share. If underwriters exercise all of their options, this amount will reach $847.6 million.In addition, Tesla has increased the amount of its convertible bonds from $1.35 billion to $1.6 billion. If the underwriters exercise all their options, the total amount of the bond will increase by $1.84 billion. Based on the current offering price and the amount of convertible bonds, Tesla is expected to raise up to approximately $2.7 billion through this mixed financing program.
Comment: Although half a year ago Ma Yilong insisted that Tesla “will not lose money and does not need financing”, this financing has indeed embarrassed Ma Yilong himself, demonstrating the enormous financial pressure Tesla is currently under. However, this financing has resolved Tesla’s short-term cash flow problem, making investors breathe a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, they also hope that Ma Yilong can concentrate more on technology research and development and production, especially since the workmanship of the existing Model 3 is somewhat unsatisfactory.
Borgward and First Automobile plan to establish a joint venture
On April 29th, Tianjin FAW Xiali Automobile Co., Ltd. officially announced that it will jointly invest with Nanjing Borgward New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd. to establish a joint venture.
According to the announcement, in order to achieve resource complementarity, jointly develop the new energy vehicle market, and seek greater economic benefits, the two parties will establish a joint venture in Nanjing to produce new energy models. Among them, FAW Xiali plans to use relevant assets such as land, factory buildings, equipment, and liabilities for investment, while Borgward will use cash for investment.
Although the investment amount and shareholding ratio of the two parties have not been officially announced, it is rumored that Borgward will invest more than 1 billion yuan and have absolute control of the joint venture.
Comment: This joint venture between Borgward and FAW Xiali seems superficially to be a combination of resource complementarity between the two parties. But looking at the content of the announcement, it is more like Borgward’s investment in purchasing FAW Xiali’s car-making qualifications. This move is similar to that of Byton, another new automaker, who acquired FAW Huali for 1 yuan last year.
FF secures $225 million in debt and trust financing
On April 30th, Beijing time, Faraday Future (FF for short) secured up to $225 million in debt and trust financing, laying a solid foundation for the successful completion of its subsequent equity financing. At the same time, FF announced a series of strategic measures, including progress in equity financing and the addition of new executives, aiming to support the launch and mass production of its flagship model, the Internet electric smart car FF91, as well as the continued development of the luxury car model FF 81, which is scheduled to be launched in 2021.> Quick Review: Although FF has been stuck in a quagmire and the production of FF91 is always uncertain, it’s undeniable that Jia Yueting’s financing ability is amazing. A super hot topic in the Car Store survey recently was “Which new car-making force brands will still be alive in five years?” Surprisingly, 39 users (2%) voted for FF. At first, I thought they were just voting casually. But now I realize that I was too naive. According to Jia’s financing ability, even after 15 years, FF is likely to still be standing. The unknown factor is whether the cars can be produced in quantity.
A Survey In the Past Week
Recently, the hottest topic in the automobile field is the spontaneous combustion of electric vehicles. This has affected Tesla, NIO, and BYD successively. Three incidents of electric vehicle spontaneous combustion have exploded on social media and also triggered strong doubts about the safety of electric vehicles among consumers.
To this end, we conducted a small survey on battery system safety in the 42 community immediately.
Currently, 466 people have participated in the vote. The details are shown in the chart below:
Although everyone has been bombarded with news of spontaneous combustion for many days, 73% of users still believe in the safety of electric vehicle batteries. It shows that the impact of the consecutive electric vehicle spontaneous combustion incidents on electric vehicle owners or potential users is not as great as they imagine.
With BYD and NIO announcing official investigation results successively, it is apparent that the safety of electric vehicle batteries is not as bad as everyone thought. It is believed that with the development of battery technology, the probability of electric vehicle spontaneous combustion will only continue to decrease.
Of course, we also hope that authoritative agencies can conduct research on the spontaneous combustion rates of gasoline vehicles and electric vehicles as soon as possible to see what the spontaneous combustion rate of electric vehicles really is.
The 42nd car garage is recruiting 1-2 automotive interns, based in Xuhui District, Shanghai. If interested, please send your resume and previous works to the email d@42how.com.
* Tesla Model S/X gets updated; Ford invests $500 million in Rivian | E Weekly News
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.