To explore a new model of risk warning of auto product quality and techniques

After its “barbaric growth” during the past several years, the intelligent connected vehicle(hereinafter referred to as ICV), as a new product form under the reform of “Automation, Connectivity, Electrification and Sharing(ACES)”, is faced with a new round of “fence building” and “ice melting” of the product quality and technical risk.

On the one hand, the “fence building” work of standards and regulations is being further improved to ensure that the auto industry can develop in a longer term. The access to ICV is restricted more closely. With the new regulatory system,  responding faster, security monitoring and vulnerability management are being strengthened, and more attention is paid to the management and supervision of the car life cycle, which will form a closed-loop management of the whole process from standard drafting, standard implementation to information feedback.

Take the recall of an American car model for example, it’s shown in Car Research’s car quality monitoring system that in November 2020, NHTSA(National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) of the U.S. announced that at least 30% of two models of that brand have failures on the infotainment system due to performance degradation. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles will be recalled from Jan, 2021, for flash memory chips used for screen may age. Furthermore, the chip’s efficiency of storing data will decrease in five or six years and then the touch screen won’t work, potentially preventing car owners from using reversing images, air conditioning and Autopilot, thereby resulting in an increased risk of a crash.

One month after NHTSA’s announcement, Germany’s motor vehicle authority (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, or KBA), followed a similar request to look into on the safety risks that related to this brand. In China,Defective Automobile Products Management Center of the State Administration for Market Regulation also officially issued the recall of related models.

On the other hand, digitalization is empowering the ACES trend, during which the risk assessment of auto product quality has been throughout the service process of the entire product life cycle, including concept, development, production, operation and maintenance, etc.

It’s worth noting that the stage from the inspection of cars by OEMs to the delivery of cars to customers is the longest stage of car’s life cycle, at which problems OEM can’t predict are most prone to occur. In the face of market saturation, car companies have to take the initiative to embrace user experience to reconstruct the automotive industry chain. At the same time, how to make good use of consumer experience clues to predict and avoid technology application risks also becomes a new issue.

Take problems of a German brand for example, in the first quarter of 2021, Car Research auto quality information monitoring system tracked dozens of customer feedback about engine failures in 48-volt mild-hybrid system, including complaints about issues like “check engine light on”, “engine won’t start”, “ engine fails to speed up”, “engine flame out” and “instrument display failure”, etc. As the track shows, some failures are about hardware, while most of them have a lot to do with software. At present, customers’ feedback about such problems keeps soaring.

In the monitoring system developed by Car Research, an automotive product quality risk assessment “matrix” is established to comprehensively examine the possibility and severity of quality issues, and the “matrix” is divided into low-risk area, tracking and observation area, nearly high-risk area, and high-risk area to further gain insights into product quality risks when new technologies are used. Apart from that, the company's close coordination with relevant government agencies, coupled with analysis of monitoring data of domestic and overseas technical regulations and standards for automobiles, allows us to gain insights into the standards and regulatory trends of new technologies.

Jia Jiangwei, senior vice president of Car Research, mentioned that the research about early warning of automotive product quality and technical risks is a brand-new exploration, and it aims to harness the advantages of researches on automotive product quality technical regulations and standards which have been conducted by Car Research these years, thereby providing reference for the management and control of automobile product quality and technical risk in the whole life cycle of automobile enterprises, as well as the research on China’s technical trade measures.