Author: Wu Ziye
While cars are getting smarter day by day, quality issues are also becoming more serious.
Recently, the 2022 China New Car Quality Study (IQS) report released by JDPower Jundi, a consumer insight and market research institution, shows that complaints due to design defects have increased. The key factors affecting the quality performance of the car.
The research report shows that in 2022, the number of new car quality problems in China will be 213 PP100, an increase of 2.8 PP100 compared with 2021.
PP100 refers to the average number of problems per 100 vehicles. The lower the score, the less the number of problems and the better the quality.
"With the advent of the era of intelligence and changes in consumption trends, the proportion of quality complaints caused by design defects has continued to rise. For manufacturers, to improve the quality of new cars, it is urgent to work hard in the product development and design stages." JDPower China Yang Tao, general manager of the district's automotive product division, said.
Parts shortage affects new car quality
According to the above report, the three categories with the largest increase in the number of complaints in the design category are driving experience, powertrain and body appearance.
Among the quality complaints, the three categories that improved the most from last year were infotainment, driver assistance and air conditioning, and their improvement also came from a reduction in design issues.
That is to say, design problems have become a key factor affecting the quality performance of automobiles.
"Design problems mainly refer to some that can still be used normally, but are not easy to use or have some disturbing alarms during use. For example, many cars now have large screens, if an angle of the large screen design is inappropriate or the material is not suitable. If it is appropriate, it will cause poor legibility, which is a design problem." Yan Xiling, a researcher in JDPower China, told reporters that there are two reasons for the increase in design problems. First, consumers pay more attention to the basic attributes of automobile products this year. Weights such as ride comfort have been increased.
The second is that auto manufacturers are actively preparing for the process of intelligentization, especially traditional manufacturers have invested a lot of resources to catch up with the pace of intelligentization. In this process, resources are limited, and some manufacturers may still have the problem of flexible resource allocation, which also leads to design defects. has risen.
Not only the Chinese market, but the resource allocation problem caused by the shortage of components such as chips has also caused the quality of new cars in the US market to decline this year.
The JD Power report noted that the decline in U.S. vehicle quality is likely to be worse given parts shortages and other issues automakers have dealt with over the past year.
And disruptions related to the pandemic have caused new vehicle quality to drop to a 36-year low on record at JD Power.
David Amodeo, global head of automotive at JD Power, said new vehicle quality showed steady improvement throughout the study, so this year's decline was disappointing, but understandable.
In an era of severe shortages of key components, automakers continue to roll out more and more technologically sophisticated vehicles.
Many automakers deliver cars to dealers without certain features installed because of shortages of various parts, especially microchips.
Amodeo believes that communicating with (customers) about changes in feature availability, and when those features will be restored, is key to keeping customers happy.
Since the beginning of this year, under the influence of the epidemic, the automobile supply chain has been interrupted for a time, which has also generally extended the pickup cycle of automobile products.
A sales executive of a 4S store in Beijing told reporters that due to the shortage of parts and components, although some auto products have already arrived at the store, some non-essential parts have not been installed on the car, and auto products have generally been reduced.
According to the JD Power report, the dimensions that influence consumers' major decisions include brand, product quality, design, price, and purchasing experience.
Among them, product quality and design product power are the most important reference for purchasing decisions.
However, the weight of quality is gradually decreasing, while the weight of product design is increasing.
"When product homogeneity is serious, differences in design will become important, and quality will gradually become a necessary condition. Consumers will not buy because of good quality, but it is not that quality is unimportant, because quality performance is not good. Good consumers will also give up. When new designs, new functions, and new products emerge in an endless stream, the performance of product design features becomes more important. This is also a process of iterative cycles. After the creativity in design is driven, the difference in quality It will become more important again.” Wang Qinghua, project research manager of JD Power China, told reporters that the importance of product design is increasing year by year, and this year for the first time surpassed the influence of brands on consumers’ purchasing decisions.
The quality of independent brands needs to be improved
In terms of brands, the overall quality problems of luxury brands are relatively small, with an average of 192 PP100 problems, 219 PP100 problems for mainstream car brands, and 225 PP100 problems for self-owned brands.
In other words, self-owned brands still need to be further improved in terms of quality.
Although the quality performance of self-owned brands in intelligence-related categories has advantages compared with mainstream international brands, there is a big gap compared with mainstream international brands in powertrain, driving experience, appearance and seats.
Among them, the problem that the self-owned brand powertrain category has risen the fastest this year is the problem of excessive fuel consumption.
Compared with joint venture brands, the proportion of self-owned brand hybrid models is generally lower, so increasing the proportion of hybrid models is one of the solutions.
At present, many independent brands have begun to make efforts in the hybrid field.
On the other hand, the industry believes that as the R&D focus of independent car companies has begun to shift to intelligence and electrification, most of them are working in the field of pure electric vehicles, which also indirectly leads to the shortage of products in fuel powertrains.
Judging from the automobile recall information released by the Product Defect Center of the State Administration for Market Regulation, the number of recalls of independent brands is also the largest.
In the first half of this year, the total number of recalled vehicles in my country reached 2.542 million.
Among them, the number of self-owned brand recalls accounted for 31.4%.
Followed by German cars, accounting for 28.1%.
Japanese brands ranked third, accounting for 19.8%.
From the perspective of specific recall issues, independent brands mainly focus on the core power system, of which transmission problems account for a large proportion.
It is worth noting that among the 799,000 vehicle product recalls of its own brand, Wuling Hongguang s recalled more than 600,000 vehicles.
From the perspective of Wuling Hongguang's products and strategy, it has occupied the market with low price strategy for many years, but quality problems under cost control also follow.
At present, independent car companies have begun to make efforts in the field of new energy and have leading advantages.
Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles are more open and avant-garde in product design and concept creation, but at the same time, the problems of new energy vehicles are also increasing.
On the one hand, the core battery safety problem still exists; on the other hand, the application of new technologies makes software problems increasingly exposed.
At present, some car companies have begun to increase the number of battery suppliers, which also brings challenges to the control of the supply chain.
Previously, the continuous fire incidents of WM Motor have attracted attention. WM Motor said that because the battery cell supplier mixed impurities in the production process, the power battery had a fire risk, thus pointing the finger at the supplier ZTE High energy.
The industry believes that the strategy of adopting multiple suppliers will test the level of supply chain management of enterprises.
Core technologies will not be exchanged between different suppliers. Even if the OEM provides a unified technical standard, each supplier can meet the standard, but there will still be subtle parameter differences between different products, which means that it is impossible for the OEM to use only one set. Management system to successfully match different suppliers of batteries.
If there are too many suppliers in the OEM and there is no targeted management system to match them, the quality of the products will be difficult to guarantee.
Regarding battery safety, Feng Hao, UL's global vice president and president of Greater China, previously told Yicai.com that first, there is a problem with the battery itself. If there are problems with the materials and design of its application, accidents will easily occur.
Second, in the battery production process, the manufacturing process and quality standards were not strictly enforced.
The third is that battery tests under various operating conditions have not been effectively managed.
For example, whether the direction of the wiring harness affects the safety performance of the battery, and whether there is a safety hazard after the wiring harness is squeezed during the manufacturing process, etc., these need to be resolved in the testing stage.