48 hours after NIO crashed

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Text / Liu Dandan

Source: Shentu (ID: shentucar)

On the afternoon of June 22, a Weilai spy truck rushed out of the Shanghai Automotive Innovation Port Building. The scene showed that the vehicle fell upside down on the ground, and the two testers in the car died after rescue.

Many keywords such as new car-building forces, testers, falling from heights, and death are intertwined, touching the nerves of countless people.

24 hours after the car crash accident, related topics were on the hot search. On the one hand, the public is eager to know the condition of the injured, and on the other hand, they are also concerned about the truth of the accident.

A series of questions need to be answered urgently by Weilai, such as whether the vehicle crash is related to autonomous driving, why vehicles appear in high-rise buildings, why vehicles crash, and so on. . ． ． . .

27 hours after the fall, Weilai’s statement was long overdue, but the statement did not disclose the cause of the accident and other information, and even deleted and released two versions, but both stated that it was an accident “not caused by vehicle reasons” ACCIDENT.

Public opinion did not subside, but intensified. Now that it has been more than 48 hours since the accident, what is the situation of “NIO’s car falling from the building”?

What happened to Weilai?

Since the “NIO car crash incident” spread on June 23, due to the lack of official information, various versions of the accident have been uploaded on social platforms, and people have different opinions on the location, floor, casualties, test car model and other information. It was not until the evening with the emergence of Weilai’s statement and more revelations that some questions were not answered.

The Shanghai Automotive Innovation Port, located at Lane 56, Antuo Road, Anting Town, Shanghai, is the center of public opinion. This is a new industrial park that opened in 2015. In Shanghai’s star-studded industrial park, the Shanghai Automotive Innovation Port is easily overlooked, but there are hundreds of car companies and parts suppliers gathered in this area.

Weilai is one of them.

In October 2015, NIO’s office building in Shanghai Innovation Harbor was officially opened. Due to its open and refined office environment, NIO’s office building was once rated as the most beautiful office in Shanghai.

The building where the car fell this time is not the Weilai headquarters building reported on the Internet, but the 3rd floor of Building 8 not far from the Weilai office building. According to deep understanding, Building 8 of Innovation Port is a parking building, which is used for parking for some company employees.

It can be seen from the pictures circulating on the Internet that the glass and guardrails on the 3rd floor of the building have disappeared. A Weilai spy loaded car was buckled upside down on the ground downstairs. Several people present worked together to lift the car into a side stand, and all kinds of debris were scattered on the ground. A source in the innovation port revealed that security personnel blocked the scene for the first time, and were not allowed to approach and take pictures.

According to news from relevant departments quoted by The Paper, the accident happened at 17:22 on June 22. Two test drivers, Du and Zhang, were injured in the car. After 120, they were sent to Anting Dongfang Hepatobiliary Hospital for treatment. Among them, Du died due to ineffective rescue, and Zhang was pronounced dead in the early morning of the 23rd after the hospital’s operation was ineffective.

The statement issued by NIO confirmed the news and revealed the identities of the two test drivers – digital cockpit testers, and the type of accident – accident.

Weilai said that at around 17:20 on June 22, a Weilai test vehicle fell from the third floor of the Shanghai Innovation Port parking building, killing two digital cockpit testers, one of whom was a company colleague and the other named. Partner employees. After the accident, the company immediately cooperated with the public security department to initiate an investigation and analysis procedure for the cause of the accident. According to the analysis of the on-site situation, it can be preliminarily confirmed that this is an accident (not caused by the vehicle) and has nothing to do with the vehicle itself.

However, from the perspective of external reactions, many people think that Weilai’s statement is inappropriate. Some voices believe that Weilai only emphasized a non-vehicle reason in the announcement, which was not convincing enough. If you want to prove your innocence, you need to disclose more details.

What are the “questions” about the crash?

In terms of time, more than 24 hours have passed since the accident and NIO issued its first statement. The brief, no-more-disclosure statement, while self-clarifying, did not quell the discussion. After all, there are too many “questions” in the eyes of this accident of falling from a high-rise building.

The first place that needs to be explained is why the spy car is in the building.

Before the official announcement came out, there were rumors circulating on the Internet that NIO was conducting an autonomous driving test in the building. However, Zhao Ting, an automotive engineer, told Shentu that as far as he knows, almost no car companies have established vehicle test sites on high floors. It’s too expensive to go upstairs.”

However, considering that the accident site is located in the parking lot, some people believe that the accident vehicle may be testing the AVP parking assistance system. However, since the NIO statement did not disclose more, it is still impossible to judge whether the two-digit cockpit tester is conducting the test. .

Another question that needs to be answered is why the vehicle rushed out of the third floor.

According to common sense analysis, there are two reasons for the vehicle to run out of control. The first is an operation error, such as accidentally stepping on the pedal; the second is the software and hardware problems of the test vehicle itself.

At present, Weilai’s statement denies the second statement. Judging from the pictures on the scene, the final state of the vehicle landing is that the four wheels are facing up, the front of the vehicle is facing outward, and the rear of the vehicle is facing the outer wall of the parking building. Combined with the design of the parking space in the building, an industry insider analyzed to Shentu that the probability of stepping on the wrong brake pedal to reverse the car and rush out of the parking lot is high. However, from the outside, the acceleration of NIO’s test vehicle is not limited, and there are certain safety hazards. .

Does just reversing have such a big impact?

Different from traditional fuel vehicles, electric vehicles have no gearbox and reverse gear restrictions. As fast as they can drive, in theory, electric vehicles can drive as fast in reverse. The car involved in the accident is currently unable to determine whether it is an ET7 or an ET5, but the two cars can accelerate from 100 kilometers to 3.8 seconds and 4.3 seconds, respectively. No matter which car, once the pedal is accidentally stepped on, the extreme acceleration performance can instantly make the car run out of control.

In addition, the curb weight of NIO ET7 and ET5 reached 2.35 tons and 2.2 tons respectively, and the power batteries of new energy vehicles are all located in the vehicle chassis. Perhaps it is under the action of these combined factors that the A/B/C/D pillars of the body on the crashed vehicle, which are used to ensure the safety of the occupants in the vehicle, were all seriously deformed, and the on-site pictures showed that the cockpit of the vehicle was almost flattened.

However, it is worth noting that there have been accidents of car companies’ products falling from heights before. In 2020, when the medium-sized SUV VV7 of the WEY brand was driving normally at high speed, due to being hit by a white pickup, it rolled from the overtaking lane to the emergency lane and fell from a height of 20 meters to the bridge, but the four people in the car were only lightly injured. Injuries are not life-threatening.

Although the causes of different accidents are different, and the falling scenes of vehicles are also very different, it is necessary to continue to pay attention to whether there are potential safety hazards in the body structure of Weilai.

In addition, unfortunately, the assisted driving systems currently being developed by car companies cannot do anything about this situation. Taking the delivered ET7 as an example, the car is equipped with AEB automatic emergency braking, RCTA-B rear crossing warning belt braking and other configurations, but these functions cannot work on static objects such as walls. Zhao Ting told Shentu: “The most useful way is to limit the speed of reversing.”

NIO’s two statements

At about 8:30 p.m. on June 23, NIO made its first reply to this matter. The statement released only revealed the identity of the employee and the type of accident, but the last sentence of the statement “This is an accident, related to the vehicle. It doesn’t matter in itself”, causing a lot of discomfort among netizens.

Several comments with a high number of likes under the statement expressed a similar attitude-“Wei Lai is too cold-blooded”. Soon after, NIO deleted the statement and issued a new statement half an hour later. The contents of the two statements before and after are basically the same, but the last sentence that was considered cold-blooded by netizens was mentioned before, and “caused by non-vehicle reasons” was added before “accident”, and selected comments were opened, only after being screened by Weilai ‘s comments are displayed.

Whether there is a problem with NIO’s vehicles still needs to be determined by the public security department, but before the accident was clearly investigated, NIO announced that it was an accident and issued two statements, which caused great disgust from the outside world.

“To deal with this sudden crisis, the core is the content that the target users are concerned about. The statement of Weilai is basically no different from the report of The Paper. After reading it, the user becomes angry with the brand. It is better not to speak up.” Long-term responsible Tianya of brand public relations said that the statement should not be turned into squeezing toothpaste. If you want to convince the outside world, you need to explain the cause and effect clearly. “Now this statement is released temporarily in response to public opinion. Although it is still impossible to judge the impact of this public opinion on Weilai. impact, but it will definitely impact user choices in the long run.”

Among the new car-making forces in China, Weilai is a car company that has developed relatively smoothly. After obtaining a financing of 7 billion yuan from Hefei in 2020 to continue its life, Weilai has always been the leader in the new car-making forces. But by 2022, Weilai has not exceeded 10,000 deliveries for 5 consecutive months, and there are more and more discussions about Weilai’s “falling behind”.

The decline in delivery is also the reason why the outside world believes that Weilai pointed out in the statement that it was an “accident”-in order to reduce the impact on the product.

At present, NIO has a total of 6 models, namely ES8, ES6, EC6, ET7, ET5 and the just-launched ES7. Among them, ES8, ES6, EC6 and ET7 have been delivered, but compared with Xiaopeng and Ideal, NIO lacks a popular model. In the past two months, NIO has delivered a total of 5,074 and 7,024 vehicles for its four models. The total delivery volume is not only lower than Ideal and Xiaopeng, but also lower than Nezha and Leapao, which have always been regarded as the second echelon by the outside world.

NIO is trying to tell more new stories to boost confidence in itself. At the Q2 earnings conference call, Weilai revealed that its Volkswagen brand is priced between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan, super fast-charging battery packs, and autonomous driving NOP+.

At the recent NIO ES7 press conference, NIO CEO Li Bin tried his best to show everyone Amway’s new car, and said, “Whether a fuel vehicle or an electric vehicle, the ES7 is a 500,000-level medium and large SUV ceiling.” However, the ideal L9 is a competing product at the same level. The slogan of “the best within 5 million yuan” was also shouted, and the Xiaopeng G9 was also eyeing the market.

The competition of the new car-making forces in the second half of the year is about to start, but Weilai seems to be disadvantaged.

Returning to the incident itself, the vehicle testing work itself has certain dangers. Regardless of whether this is a tragedy that occurred during the testing process, this accident reminds the industry that car companies must strictly control whether the use of test vehicles is suitable or not. Regulations, improve the internal testing process supervision system, pay attention to whether there are potential safety hazards in the test site, etc., to avoid such accidents from happening again.

*The picture is from the Internet. At the request of the interviewee, Zhao Ting and Tianya are pseudonyms in the text.

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