Stapler making a car?
Editor’s note: This article is from “Future Car Daily” (WeChat public ID: auto-time), author: Carmen flights.
Author | Ketchup
Edit | Liang Chen
Can staples also become parts of a car?
On Xiaopeng car, yes.
Under the representative car company of “Building New Forces” and the “My first smart car” is the Slogan’s Xiaopeng car, there are a number of staples for fixing soundproofing noise-reducing materials. .
For the car industry, “staple” is a rare moment in the auto parts supply chain.
But for the Xiaopeng car, or even the spiritual leader of the new car, Tesla, this is not a problem, because the latter has also been exposed to the “tape process” with industrial tape fixing parts. .
The car is a large machine on many levels. Is it safe to prioritize safety in a new car’s product manual when chasing cutting-edge technology including autonomous driving?
This makes people worry that new cars may go astray. In the eyes of the auto industry, the assembly line of staples appearing at Xiaopeng G3 illustrates a problem – although the “OEM model” can save a lot of costs for “making new forces”, it is very easy to fall into quality control. Black hole.”
Staple on the soundboard
In recent days, some Xiaopeng owners told the Future Auto Daily (ID: auto-time), in the middle of the first two rounds of Xiaopeng’s current G3, the sound-insulating noise-reducing materials hidden behind the chassis guards. Some staples were used for fixing.
“I didn’t expect the car and the staples to be hooked up.” A Xiaopeng G3 owner said helplessly.
Future Auto Daily noticed that on August 6th, in the owner group of Xiaopeng Automobile, a car owner said that in the middle of the two front wheels, the phenomenon that the stapler fixed soundproofing noise-reducing materials was found.
Afterwards, other car owners said they found similar situations.
There is also the owner of the car, except that the stapler is fixed at the bottom of the car.Near the position of the accelerator pedal, a suspected staple was also found.
On August 7th, the Future Auto Daily (ID: auto-time), accompanied by a Xiaopeng G3 owner, inspected the vehicle and found two staples in the accelerator pedal position inside the car. .
In addition to the staples, the Xiaopeng owner encountered other problems during the driving process, such as abnormal steering wheel, abnormal brakes, heavy pollution inside the car, and the door could not be locked properly.
Another Xiaopeng owner also reflected the problem of locking the door: “Pinch the outside and can’t open it, pinch the lock inside.”
There is also the owner of the Raiders, the problem with the door handle is the “habitual stuck” of the system. The solution is to “put the handle behind the door handle for two seconds, don’t move, then unlock.”
In the case of the staples of the car bottom and the accelerator pedal position reflected by the aforementioned Xiaopeng G3 owner, the future car daily report (ID: auto-time) asks Xiaopeng Automobile for the certificate, which indicates that the “white nail” under the car is used. The soundproof cotton is fixed, and the staples at the position of the accelerator pedal are not provided by the vehicle, and “has nothing to do with Xiaopeng”.
For Xiaopeng Automobile’s staples to fix the bottom parts, Jia Xinguang, an auto industry analyst, said that staples should not appear on a car. “This is not a formal process, and generally requires screw fastening.
A traditional car executive familiar with the manufacturing process told the Future Auto Daily (ID: auto-time) that he was shocked by the situation.
Because the bottom of the car is a place with many system layouts and poor working conditions, high temperature, friction, stone strike, waterproof, insulation, etc. need to be fully considered and verified. Traditional cars and oil roads are all in the category of safety parts. Relevant materials and processes must meet standards and regulations.
“The process of fixing stapled materials must not be rushed, but it has not been seen in the mainstream manufacturers.” The above-mentioned car executives said.
He also believes that this kind of assembly performance is not uncommon in the “new car power”. “Before, Tesla is different for each car. The tape process exposed in the previous paragraph may also be Similar.”
The “tape process” here refers to a group of cameras in which Tesla was exposed to the Model 3 using electrical tape during mid-July.
But this news was denied by Tesla and said that employees were not authorized to use electrical tape and that the vehicle was subject to strict inspection before shipment.
Rough Tesla
The “tape process” is not the first time Tesla has been questioned for rough assembly.
As early as the end of 2017, Reuters reported that, after the assembly completed the quality inspection model S and modIn el X, more than 90% will be detected for defects.
This news has enabled people to refresh their understanding of Tesla, and Tesla did not deny the report, and believes that the vast majority of deviations are minor problems, “a few minutes can be resolved.”
In August 2018, UBS hosted a disassembly of the Model 3 and found that the car had a more serious “assembly problem” than the competitors, including the inconsistencies in the entire car. , poor assembly error control and some missing bolts.
UBS also said that after contacting the manufacturing experts and former Tesla employees on the above issues, it was found that the gap and noise problems were difficult to repair and that it was “expensive” even if it could be repaired.
The response to this Tesla is that the Model 3’s panel gap is comparable to that of Mercedes-Benz BMW and Audi, and it’s still trying to make the gap smaller – which is tantamount to acknowledging that the early Model 3 did have assembly quality problems. .
In addition, in a Model 3 photo circulating online in late July this year, Tesla’s logo was actually installed on the left side of the front hood, rather than centered.
The last question for Tesla was the existence of a “tent factory.”
In June 2018, in order to solve the capacity bottleneck of Model 3, Tesla set up a “tent factory” in a parking lot outside the Fremont factory and placed a production line in it.
It has been reported that the “tent factory” has occasionally occurred when the mouse bites the wire.
In the eyes of auto professionals, the existence of the “tent factory” is simply a joke. “(Exposure) is not only a problem of poor working environment for employees, but it is more likely to cause assembly problems.”
This move was subsequently allegedly violated California’s safety production regulations and was fined $29,000.
It should be pointed out that even if the “tent factory” is rough, it belongs to Tesla’s “own factory” and can have absolute right to speak about relevant quality control. But for Xiaopeng, it has to rely on the hippocampus for factory manufacturing.
The emergence of the stapler process means that as an old factory with more than 30 years of history, the hippocampus’ understanding of automobile manufacturing is still at a relatively thicker level.
At a sub-forum on the Boao Forum in March this year, Haima Chairman Jing Zhu expressed his opinion on electric vehicles: “At present, there are two types of people who buy electric cars, one of which is bought as a toy. The other is for cheap.”
Complete death knot
In order to build a car that is cheap enough, the hippocampus did a lot of work on cost savings.
In the eyes of the automotive industry, this is exactly the “manufacturing model.””The knot is difficult to untie.
“Foundry” is the most criticized, it is impossible to completely penetrate the quality system into the entire manufacturing cycle of a car, because the foundry is completely the cooperation of the two subjects.
This also divides the “new forces of making cars” into two different routes, namely, the OEM model of Xiaopeng and Weilai, and the self-built factory model of Weimar and Aichi.
So far, the pros and cons of these two models are not completely clear, but the emergence of the staple process may break this balance to some extent.
A car dealer who works for a luxury brand once told the Future Auto Daily (ID: auto-time) that Weimar is more reliable than Xiaopeng’s foundry model because the founder Shen Hui I used to stay in a traditional car company for a long time, understand every manufacturing process, and also have a self-built factory.
Shen Hui himself explained the specific reasons for “not to work” in a speech at the end of 2016: First, because people understand the traditional overcapacity in the traditional sense, it is just “structural excess”, that is, the low end. Lack of overcapacity, the real high-end manufacturing capacity is still scarce; Second, the car involves people’s life safety, only a complete manufacturing system from top to bottom, OEM production is the responsibility of consumers.
He also cited the case of the four electric vehicles in the United States – Fisker, Coda, Wheego, Tesla, the first three of which chose to work, and later died. Instead, Tesla, who built the factory, survived.
So Shen Hui vowed to build a factory to build a car.
This idea is similar to Ai Chi, which has gathered a large wave of traditional auto people. Its founder is Fu Qiang, a well-known car manager.
Summary, the route of Weimar and Aichi is basically “+ Internet”, and the practitioners of Xiaopeng and Weilai are more “Internet +”.
Wei Li founder Li Bin once claimed that he had seen Porsche’s production line and believed that “it is definitely better than the production line of Jianghuai production.”
So far, Wei Lai has not made a problem similar to the staples. In some cases, it is related to Shen Feng, the former president of Volvo China R&D, and the vice president of quality and chairman of the quality management committee.
But this still can’t stop Wei’s becoming the first car manufacturer to implement the recall. Because the internal wiring harness of the power battery may cause safety hazards, Wei recalled 4803 ES8 at the end of June. This led to a sharp drop in the sales of this “Merald” model.
In this recall, Wei came back to this pot and did not give the founder Jianghuai Automobile.
In addition to Wei Lai and Xiao Peng, new car companies such as Skyrim have adopted the OEM model.
Of course, for the new forces of the car, the foundry model can help them launch products and occupy the market faster in the absence of “qualification”.
However, the drawbacks of the foundry model are also obvious – in addition to the difficult control of the quality control, the manufacturing schedule is often difficult to control, which also directly led to the “difficult delivery” of the “new car power.”
But after it was difficult to overcome the difficulty of delivery, the car owners found assembly details similar to “staples”. The quality questioning caused by this will seriously affect the brand’s secondary spread from word of mouth.
This is a fatal one for the “selling new forces” that are eager to operate the Internet products and hope to achieve user growth through viral marketing.
Surviving
In fact, in addition to the “staple”, the owners of Xiaopeng Automobile also found other problems with the use of cars.
In the previous visit to the aforementioned car owners, the ID: auto-time found that the Xia Peng G3 parked in the parking lot did not completely lock the window, and the owner said that the smell inside the car was too large. Therefore, it is specially reserved for the gap.
On August 14th, a car owner said that since the upgrade of Xmart 1.5OS, the car has turned to the left.
Another car owner said that after repairing the car, his Xiaopeng G3 appeared in a direction of deviation. However, when he went to find Xiaopeng, he found that the other party did not even have four-wheel positioning. Can be adjusted manually.”
This made him feel incredible. “I hope to get this car as soon as possible.”
This means that Xiaopeng Automobile not only encounters problems in product level, but also encounters problems in marketing strategy (new cars are cheaper to enter the market and are protected by old car owners). There is also a new shortcoming in after-sales service – it cannot be timely and effectively The owner of the car provides services.
For traditional car companies, this is a system, the product and marketing strategy is responsible for the main engine factory, and the circulation link is handed over to the 4S shop.
Xiaopeng Automobile’s current direct + authorized mode, if even the basic after-sales service like four-wheel positioning can not be solved, there is no doubt that this will be an extremely fragile “system.”
As a new force for making cars, it is difficult to incite the inherent mode of traditional car companies from manufacturing to sales to after-sales service in this case, because it is very likely that even self-insurance will become a problem.
One side of the complexity of building a car is that it is not everything that is made out of the car, it needs to be sold successfully, and it has to provide high-quality after-sales service.
It takes money to complete this series of actions. For financing-driven companies, it is necessary to balance in research and development, production, and after-sales. If any problem occurs, it will become a big problem.
A difficult change for He Xiaopeng is that before the car is delivered to the user, no matter how much the research and development, intelligence and other related issues can be overemphasized, even he said “slow is fast”It is also true to some extent. But once the car has started to deliver, then you need an efficient system to provide services around the user, not just to emphasize that “smart” can solve all the problems.
Fortunately, He Xiaopeng is a technology-born, and the belief is also a typical engineer culture. What he needs to understand is that all products, including service products, also need this meticulous engineer culture to solve the user’s car problem.
This is no small challenge, but it is related to the survival of Xiaopeng.
