The Importance of Quality Control in the New Energy Vehicle Industry
Author: Kenvin
Introduction: Quality has always been the foundation of any enterprise, and without it, there is no future. This is particularly important in the new energy vehicle industry, where technologies such as the Three Electric Systems and intelligent systems are not yet fully mature and require automakers to invest more in quality control.
Every brand has a crucial model, and for NIO, it is the T03— the vehicle that saves the brand from crisis. However, in the year following its launch, numerous complaints about quality issues have arisen from T03 vehicle owners. Given that NIO is only 6 years old, it is understandable that its quality control system may not be fully established. However, NIO’s first vehicle, the S01, also faced quality issues.
Quality is the foundation of any enterprise, and without it, there is no future. This is particularly important in the new energy vehicle industry, where technologies such as the Three Electric Systems and intelligent systems are not yet fully mature and require automakers to invest more in quality control. The quality issues surrounding the T03 is a warning sign for NIO. It can either be the turning point for NIO’s success or the downfall of the brand. At the same time, NIO should reflect on why the first and second vehicle models have both faced quality issues. Is it just a coincidence?
“All new automakers must go through what Tesla has gone through.”
“All new automakers must go through what Tesla has gone through.” This phrase has gradually become the law of the new energy vehicle industry in China. It means that many other new automakers will encounter similar crises that Tesla faced when growing up, such as suspected brake failure, insufficient intelligent driving features that led to traffic accidents, and public relations crises.
Just as NIO is facing the criticism of two deadly accidents involving its autonomous driving technology in August of this year, as well as some unprofessional public relations handling, Zero Run Automobile, another newcomer, has also had multiple complaints from owners of its T03 model, which claimed that the lane-keeping assist system cannot keep the car in a straight line.
Yes, you read that right. The lane-keeping assist system of the Zero Run T03 model cannot keep the car in a straight line, and the car cannot follow the curve of the lane properly.
According to several owners of the Zero Run T03 who spoke to Times Finance, “The L2 intelligent driving assistance system is currently only a partial product,” “The lane-keeping assistance system cannot keep the car in a straight line, and it is exaggerating its capabilities,” “There is a significant gap between it and the mature lane-keeping assist systems on the market,” and so on.
Secondly, some car owners claim that “don’t count on the automatic emergency braking system, you still have to rely on yourself when driving”, which indicates that the active emergency braking system of the ORA T03 is ineffective when encountering sudden situations ahead. This has greatly reduced the confidence of ORA T03 car owners in the company’s self-developed L2 advanced driving assistance system. Fortunately, no accidents or personal safety accidents caused by the use of this advanced driving assistance system have been reported on the internet so far.
It is reported that the L2 intelligent driving assistance system equipped on the ORA T03 was only upgraded through OTA in March this year. After the OTA upgrade of the whole car in March this year, only three intelligent driving assistance functions were opened, including LKA lane keeping assistance system, AEB automatic emergency braking system, and ACC adaptive cruise control system. According to the ORA official website, the latest OTA for the T03 model was pushed on August 10th, with the latest version being 1.01.68. The content updated in this version mainly involves 5 aspects: BMS battery management system upgrade, VCU vehicle control unit upgrade, ICU instrument upgrade (Comfort version), IVI central control function upgrade, and MCU motor controller upgrade.
Obviously, the 5 major functions upgraded in the 1.01.68 version of ORA T03 did not involve L2 intelligent driving assistance, which means that the problem of T03 car owners feedback that the car cannot run straight and the emergency active braking has not been responded and improved by ORA. If the problem is real and has a wide range of impacts, it is recommended that ORA solve the problem of T03’s immature driving assistance technology as soon as possible, so as not to regret after accidents. After all, the S01 rights protection incident happened not long ago.
According to statistics, from 2013 to April this year, Tesla has had at least 218 accidents worldwide. Over 90% of the causes of these accidents are related to sudden loss of control, such as sudden acceleration/deceleration, brake failure, and steering failure. The proportion of accidents with the AUTOPILOT intelligent driving assistance system turned on before the accident has not been counted, but after car owners have died in accidents, Tesla and NIO deliberately renamed the original automatic driving system as an assisted driving system, and strengthened the promotion and education of car owners on the use of assisted driving after picking up the car.
If basic quality cannot be guaranteed, how can it surpass Tesla?As the rising star of China’s new energy vehicle industry, following the leading player NIO, on July 15th this year, ZERORUN Motors held the ZERORUN 2.0 strategic launch event in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. Founder Zhu Jiangming stated that ZERORUN is very confident in autonomous driving technology and expects to use its self-developed chip to achieve full-scene autonomous driving technology by 2024, surpassing Tesla within three years, and launching 8 models covering the price range of below 350,000 RMB before the end of 2025, with sales reaching 800,000 vehicles.
As soon as this strategy was announced, industry insiders looked at ZERORUN with skeptical eyes. What could a relatively unknown ZERORUN Motors do to knock Tesla off its throne?
According to the data released by ZERORUN Motors, the total orders for ZERORUN Motors in August were 7,607, an increase of 16% compared to the previous month, with cumulative orders for 2021 reaching 35,662. Among them, the orders for the ZERORUN T03 in August were 7,228. The total delivery volume of ZERORUN Motors in August was 4,488, with the ZERORUN T03 accounting for 4,409. Since the ZERORUN C11 is currently in the pre-sale stage, there is no delivery volume yet. Therefore, the delivery volume of ZERORUN S01 can be estimated to be 79. As the product that led ZERORUN into the new energy vehicle market, the S01 can be said to have already fulfilled its historic mission of establishing the brand.
The sales of the T03 alone in August reached 4,488, which helped ZERORUN Motors closely follow the leading players Ideale, NIO, and XPeng in the new energy vehicle manufacturing field. However, faced with increasing investment from numerous new energy vehicle competitors, a single product can only go so far. In order to avoid lagging behind in the monthly sales rankings, ZERORUN’s vision can only be pinned on the C11 model to be delivered in October.
ZERORUN Motors officially started pre-sales of the C11 as early as January 1, 2021. The C11 is priced between 150,000 and 200,000 RMB and comes with extremely luxurious hardware and an intelligent cockpit, equipped with the self-developed Leap Pilot 2.0 intelligent auxiliary driving system. In the early stages of pre-sales, there were even tempting car purchase policies. Customers who pre-ordered from January to September 2021 could enjoy a tiered car purchase discount: if you ordered in January, you would receive 20,000 RMB discount off the 40,000 RMB car purchase price, if you ordered in February, you would receive 20,000 RMB discount off the 38,000 RMB car purchase price, and so on, with a decreasement of 2,000 RMB discount amount each month. Although ZERORUN Motors has not disclosed the total number of blind pre-order customers, it can be seen from the August order figures released by ZERORUN itself that only a total of 379 orders were placed for the C11 and S01, in addition to the high-volume T03. Clearly, this number is not enough to give Zhu Jiangming the confidence to surpass Tesla within three years.But LINGPANG has been smooth sailing in terms of financing. According to the data, LINGPANG has completed Pre-A round, A round, and A+ round of financing in January and November of 2018, and August of 2019, respectively, with a total amount of 2.76 billion yuan. Later in January 2021, LINGPANG completed its B round of financing, with an amount of 4.3 billion yuan. In addition, with the recent financing of 4.5 billion yuan in August 2021, the total financing amount of LINGPANG has reached 11.56 billion yuan, making it the seventh new automaker in China to raise more than 10 billion yuan. Previously, only six new automakers, including XIAOPENG, NIO, IDEAL, NAZHA, WM, and HI-LINE, had achieved financing over 10 billion yuan. Unfortunately, LINGPANG has not yet taken any action in the IPO.
LINGPANG automobile is backed by Dahua Group, which has a market value of 60 billion yuan. Wealthy LINGPANG is engaged in system development, new energy electric vehicle production and supporting parts R&D and production, as well as providing cloud computing-based vehicle networking solutions, etc. Currently, the first domestic self-developed intelligent driving chip is produced by LINGPANG, and it is expected to be installed in the C11 car to be delivered in October. The new car will carry the first domestically produced vehicle-grade AI self-driving chip with fully independent intellectual property rights – the LINGXIANG 01 chip, which will be used in conjunction with Leap Pilot 2.0.
Raising over 10 billion yuan in financing shows that LINGPANG automobile has won the favor of the capital market. With the support of capital and the backing of a large group, LINGPANG automobile showcases its R&D team’s strength through the development of their self-developed chips. However, today, despite LINGPANG’s wealth and sufficient manpower, there have been complaints and feedback from car owners about the low-level flaw that the intelligent driving assistance cannot keep the car in the lane or drive straight. It is currently unclear whether this is simply a problem with a particular version, a particular owner, or a widespread issue. Nevertheless, LINGPANG automobile should collect and evaluate the car owners’ complaints and feedback as soon as possible, identify the cause, and rectify the problem, so that they can strengthen the quality of their products from the basic level and surpass Tesla with greater confidence, better products, and more stable progress.
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.