Because “NIO” has no “future”, who is responsible for the accidental death of 2 test drivers?

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2,563 of the models involved have been delivered.

Author | Liu Qinwen Editor | Cai Zhen

Source: Mustang Finance

Weilai has another accident. On June 22, two employees sat in the NIO test vehicle. The vehicle suddenly rushed out of the third floor for unknown reasons and landed on the left side of the vehicle. The two test drivers were rescued by fire rescue personnel and handed over to 120. 120 arrived at the scene. Afterwards, the two were quickly sent to the hospital for rescue, but in the end Du died due to ineffective rescue, and Zhang was declared dead in the early morning of the 23rd after the hospital’s operation was ineffective.

Controversy over wording of response

After the incident, the news of “Wei Lai’s car was exposed to crash out of the headquarters building” also quickly rushed to the hot search on Weibo. Judging from the scene, the car body was seriously damaged, and speculations continued on the cause of the crash.

According to the “New Yellow River” report, he called Jinan Weilai Automobile Sales and Service Co., Ltd. in the name of buying a car and asked whether the cause of the crash of Weilai’s test car was related to the braking system. The staff responded, “It is not a braking problem. Put reverse gear into forward gear.”

There is also a response from Weilai’s customer service that the accident does not rule out improper human operation. At present, this situation is under investigation and handling, and the specific situation is still unclear.

“Car Review Network” reported that a number of vehicle development engineers believe that the automatic driving program of the field test may be faulty. After all, the on-site operators have rich driving experience, and the probability of stepping on the wrong accelerator is very low. In the industry, problems are also common in the prototype engineering testing stage, but it is a major internal liability accident that it rushes out of the building and causes death.

Weilai responded publicly on the evening of the 23rd, but the two responses again caused controversy. Wei Lai first responded at 8:33, “One of them is a company colleague and the other is a partner employee. A special group has been set up to help family members deal with the aftermath. At the end of the response, it said, “This is a case together. Accidents have nothing to do with the vehicle itself. “

The last sentence immediately aroused dissatisfaction, and many netizens felt that its wording was inappropriate. Then Weilai deleted the Weibo and republished it at nine o’clock, with the content changed to “This is an accident (not caused by the vehicle).” However, a filter was set up in the comment area.

Behind the two announcements, this second announcement wasn’t even from NIO’s internal PR staff. After the first announcement was issued at 20:33, a car owner named Lin Wei put forward an opinion, saying, “The sentence ‘has nothing to do with the vehicle’ has a problem with its semantics. It has nothing to do with the vehicle? Going down, how do you say the vehicle doesn’t matter? At least there is a specific content about the vehicle.” And gave a new copy at 20:56, Ma Lin, director of public relations at Weilai, said, “Lin Lu’s version is good.” 21:02 points, the second announcement is issued.

Lin Wei, who gave opinions, has a very close relationship with Weilai. In addition to being the owner of Weilai, he is also the director of the first and second user trust of Weilai Automobile. The founders Li Bin and Lin Wei belong to the asset management committee.

The Weilai App shows that Li Bin transferred 50 million Weilai shares in January 2019 to establish a Weilai user trust. According to the “Prospectus” disclosed by Weilai, Li Bin established the Weilai User Trust Fund to let all Weilai users discuss how to use the economic benefits of this part of the stock. The original intention of making this decision is to let users not only have a sense of participation, but also have a sense of ownership of the company in some form.

Looking at it now, the market value of this stock has exceeded 1.153 billion US dollars (calculated at the closing price of US $ 23.05 per share as of June 24, Eastern Time).

After the incident continued to ferment, Ma Lin, director of public relations at Weilai, said again late at night, “The company is very sad, it is not cold, it is my responsibility, we continue to improve.”

The model involved was ET7, and 2,563 vehicles were delivered

NIO confirmed to Times Finance that the model is ET7.

NIO currently has two sedans, the ET5 and ET7. Among them, ET5 has not yet been officially delivered. It will be launched in December 2021 and is expected to be delivered in September 2022. The official website shows that the price is between 328,000 yuan and 428,000 yuan.

The ET7 was launched in January 2021 and delivered on March 28, 2022, with 163 units sold in March, 693 units in April, and 1,707 units in May, for a total of 2,563 units. Weilai’s official website shows that the price of ET7 is between 458,000 and 536,000 yuan.

Although the delivery of ET7 was not long, many users reported that there was a “squatting” situation. On June 11, a Weilai car owner said in the Weilai Community App, “ET7 was lying in the nest while driving. On the 13th day of picking up the car, it was driving normally without any warning. Suddenly the whole vehicle was powered off and the brakes failed. The inertia stopped slowly, all the electrical equipment failed, and the double flashes could not be turned on. Fortunately, it was not on a high speed today. ”

Subsequently, the senior director of product quality of Weilai Automobile posted in the Weilai community that he received feedback from ET7 users that the vehicle stopped driving while driving. After preliminary investigation and analysis, the reason is: the low-voltage battery charging module of the vehicle has failed, and the fault is displayed on the instrument panel, but it is not obvious, and the prompt strength is not enough to effectively guide the user to stop driving and pull over. After the failure, if the vehicle continues to drive for about 10-15 minutes, the vehicle may stop driving.

The testing process is complicated and the testers are dangerous

In order to ensure the safety of any vehicle before it leaves the factory, it needs to go through a very rigorous testing process. Since there is currently no unified testing standard, each car company generally has its own testing process. And new energy vehicles are different from traditional gasoline vehicles.

In its response, Weilai said that the victims were digital cockpit testers. Jingwei Hengrun, who is engaged in intelligent driving, car networking, new energy, and artificial intelligence, said that the intelligent cockpit system, as a high value-added electronic system integrating intelligent network connection and driving experience, is the core three areas of future automobiles. For the larger part, its key role of directly facing consumers determines the need for a series of verification and testing methods, such as human-computer interaction testing, intelligent identification testing, vehicle interaction testing, intelligent driving assistance testing, and intelligent interconnection testing.

To put it simply, such as screen effects, the fluency of the vehicle system, UI design, the richness of vehicle functions, the richness of instrument functions, scalability, and voice interaction.

It is not yet known what kind of accident occurred during the test, and further investigation results are needed.

The intelligent cockpit service is only one part of the detection. Chery Automobile once said that for the test of the whole vehicle, a DVP&R test plan is generally drawn up first. The whole vehicle test is mostly distinguished by the experimental content, and there are tests in various professional directions, such as reliability and durability test, performance test. The performance test includes more detailed special tests such as braking performance, acceleration performance, handling stability test, ride comfort test, safety performance test, etc. The general performance test will have 30-50 items.

“There are a lot of car rollovers and injuries in vehicle testing, but I have never heard of death. There are a few casualties in vehicle testing and activities. Vehicle testing often challenges and tests some extreme performances, and testers are obviously dangerous.” An industry source said.

In July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the “Management Specification for Road Test and Demonstration Application of Intelligent Connected Vehicles (Trial)”, which stipulates that if you want to apply for a road test, you must purchase traffic accidents. A certificate of compulsory liability insurance and a certificate of traffic accident liability insurance of not less than 5 million yuan per vehicle or a letter of guarantee for an accident compensation for an autonomous driving road test of not less than 5 million yuan.

“From a legal point of view, enterprises may have corresponding legal liabilities in the following two aspects: on the one hand, the liability for employee casualties. This first depends on whether the enterprise has purchased sufficient work-related injury insurance for employees, which is a labor The basic bottom line of employment. On the other hand, it is the responsibility of safe production. Enterprises must strictly abide by legal regulations and industry standards in production, operation, research and development and other links. Once verified by the department responsible for safety production supervision and management, enterprises and Relevant practitioners are at risk of being subject to joint disciplinary measures such as administrative punishment, and if their behavior constitutes a crime, they will be investigated for corresponding criminal responsibility in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Criminal Law.” Beijing Kangda (Guangzhou) lawyer Du Xuhao said.

“As for the compensation that the close relatives of the testers can receive, this needs to be in accordance with the current labor law and the regulations on work-related injury insurance, which are mainly funeral allowances, pensions for dependent relatives and one-time work-related death allowances.”

“Nio’s accident is very special. It happened that the test vehicle was placed upstairs. Generally, units rarely put vehicles upstairs. Vehicle testers are mainly on the ground. If the test vehicle of Weilai is on the ground Doing an experiment, even if it fails, it won’t matter much.” said Zhong Shi, an analyst in the auto industry.

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