Secret criticism of Ideal Tesla? The Difficulties Behind the General Administration’s Document to Strengthen Automobile OTA Recall Supervision

Recently, the General Office of the State Administration for Market Regulation issued a "Notice on Further Strengthening the Recall Supervision of Automobile Remote Upgrade (OTA) Technology."

One stone kills a thousand waves, and there is a lot of discussion in the industry and among the public: Why did the General Administration suddenly take heavy action? Which brands triggered this new policy? What impact will it have on future OTA practices?

Che Jujun will discuss it with everyone. ?

1. OTA management is chaotic and requires supervision when it comes to safety

As of 2019, as many as 6.83 million vehicles have been recalled in the Chinese market due to software problems, of which 79% have chosen to use OTA conducts recall. The large number and opaque effect cast a shadow over OTA.

Therefore, the first article of the notice points out that all OTAs must register with the State Administration for Market Regulation in accordance with the "Recall Management Regulations" and the "Implementation Measures of the Recall Management Regulations".

This means: Whether the OEM is pushing software to fix defects or updating software on a daily basis, it must file a record with the General Administration in accordance with the requirements of "recall".

This kind of "one size fits all" upgrade action may be because the General Administration has been angered by the practice of "fishing in troubled waters" by some manufacturers.

We know that there are two types of OTA currently: one is SOTA for ordinary software, such as over-the-air upgrades of navigation, in-car entertainment, human-computer interaction and other software; the other is FOTA, which is firmware upgrade, such as Updates to suspension, steering, braking, body control, ADAS assisted driving and other systems.

Obviously, the latter is more important, because most of them involve driving safety. Improper upgrades will not only fail to solve the defects, but will also cause new hidden dangers, directly affecting the personal and property safety of consumers.

The General Administration's "one size fits all" policy is to prevent some manufacturers from using the name of OTA to cover up recalls that should be carried out.

What’s more, the notice will not only take effect immediately, but will also be retroactive to OTAs that have occurred throughout 2020.

Some insiders analyze that this may be a regulatory policy for Li Auto OTA. Because only it is officially OTA starting from January this year.

In order to verify the previous OTAs of Ideal, Che Jujun browsed its official website, APP, and major media, but there was no complete record. The above table can only be compiled based on limited information for your reference.

Even when Che Jujun dialed the ideal 400 number, the customer service staff could not answer the time of the first OTA this year. But he was very enthusiastic, and after some verification he replied:

"As of the end of October, Ideal *** has conducted ten OTAs."

The last one should be 10 The OTA of V1.4.18 (internal beta version) on October 28th mainly adds an alarm function when the side and front trucks merge, which is obviously aimed at the high-speed rear-end collision case on October 22nd.

Che Jujun then realized that the notice from the General Administration was too right. Because even the manufacturer’s customer service does not know the specific OTA node, let alone consumers and regulatory agencies? Explanation: The previous OTA management was too confusing.

"Just today, we pushed OTA again, the version should be V.1.4.19." The customer service staff introduced it proactively. What a coincidence. It sounds like this update mainly adds two early warning switches:

▎The truck parallel warning switch can be selected to be on all day, half off, or only on at night. It is estimated that some car owners find it too troublesome to call the police.

▎Lane departure warning switch. If it is turned off, at speeds above 45km/h, even if assisted driving is turned on and the system changes lanes without turning on the lights, the system will no longer alarm.

As you can see, today’s two new items are both related to security. Obviously, by allowing car owners to choose, car owners can reduce the trouble of being "disturbed by alarms", but this will objectively increase a certain risk.

It is even illegal to change lanes without turning on the lights, but the new feature allows car owners to do so.

I don’t know, has Ideal’s latest OTA been registered with the General Administration, and has there been any relevant risk analysis?

2. Can OTA eliminate all security risks with one clever trick?

Article 2 of the notice clearly stipulates: If a manufacturer uses OTA to eliminate defects, it must formulate a recall plan in accordance with the "Recall Regulations" and "Implementation Measures" and file it with the General Administration.

In other words, OTA is no longer a refuge for recalls. It does not mean that you have completed the recall obligation by taking this action, but it must ensure that the results are valid.

Still taking the ideal OTA as an example, in order to avoid another accident involving a rear-ended truck, it has an OTA alarm function. But can adding an alarm function solve the problem of Ideal ONE’s insufficient recognition of sideways vehicles?

Public information shows that the "horizontal viewing angle" of the Ideal ONE's front-view camera is only 52 degrees, which has inherent flaws in the recognition of lateral obstacles. How can this kind of hardware problem be solved through a software update?

It turns out that the ideal V1.4.18 update only adds an early warning function for lateral trucks, but cannot fundamentally eliminate safety hazards. Replacing a new camera or adding an angular millimeter wave radar is the correct solution.

For example, you cannot ask a myopic patient to increase their concentration to achieve the purpose of seeing clearly.

Tesla has similar problems.

Its vehicles are known for often having a black screen, but what it often does is ask car owners to press and hold the left and right scroll wheels on the steering wheel and restart the big screen to solve the problem. At the same time, OTA will be used to alleviate the black screen symptom from time to time.

But in fact this is not a software problem, it is also a hardware problem.

Recently, Tesla sent emails to some users announcing the so-called "warranty adjustment project", which targets touch screens.

The letter stated that Model? S or Model?

If a user encounters a similar problem, and Tesla detects that it is an 8GB card problem, it will replace the 64GB card for the user for free, and users who have had it repaired before can get a refund.

You see, no matter how powerful Tesla’s OTA method is, it cannot solve the hardware problems of this kind of chip.

But it obviously did not register with the General Administration, because it did not recall it and was only labeled as a "warranty adjustment".

Che Jujun’s Model S also belongs to this batch and often has a black screen. The most recent black screen lasted for 5 minutes, which made him afraid to start the car. But Tesla didn’t send us an email, not even a warranty.

Mr. Huang (Richey Huang) in Shanghai is even more unlucky than Che Jujun. While driving his Model 3 at high speed on November 26, the screen suddenly went black and the system suddenly slowed down.

In anger, he drove the car to the Tesla Hongqiao Center and hung a slogan on the rear window:

High speed black screen, if you dare to drive, buy it.

The second article of the General Administration’s notice actually makes it very clear at the end: if OTA fails to eliminate the hidden danger, the manufacturer should recall it again.

This is the importance of the new policy: once OTA is brought into the scope of legal regulations, it is no longer the manufacturer’s final say whether defects are eliminated, but there are laws to follow and supervision.

If the defect cannot be eliminated, we are sorry and please issue a second recall. ?

3. Hacker intrusion and remote control are the focus of supervision!

Article 3 specifically states: If a manufacturer learns that a vehicle has been hacked, remotely controlled, or otherwise involved in a security incident, it must immediately launch an investigation and analysis and report the results to the General Administration.

This one is simply tailor-made for Tesla.

According to Che Jujun’s statistics, since May this year, there have been seven reported “uncontrolled door” incidents involving Tesla in ***, China. Among them, Mr. Chen from Wenzhou was seriously injured and required 7 hours of rescue; Ms. Liu's Model?

Tesla’s unified reply was that there were no background data abnormalities.

In addition, various "pro-Special" media outlets secretly insinuated that the car owner stepped on the wrong pedal. Che Jujun has done detailed analysis before, and this possibility is very slim. Even if they step on the wrong one, why have Tesla owners across the country collectively stepped on the wrong one in the past few months? Moreover, in the Nanchang out-of-control case, the speed was maintained at 127km/h for 8 kilometers. This cannot be the result of a human "stepping wrongly".

As shown in the picture above, there are more than one or two cases where inexplicable vehicles suddenly appear on the Tesla APP. One Model 3 owner even found that a Model 3 from another province appeared on his APP and could be controlled remotely - coincidentally, he and that owner happened to be in the same owner group.

Ordinary car owners can control other Tesla vehicles unintentionally; so, what if someone does it intentionally? You taste it, you taste it carefully.

But Tesla never gave a clear explanation from beginning to end.

Xiao Lingyun, director of the Automotive Department of the Defective Product Management Center of the State Administration for Market Regulation, publicly stated: “If 200,000 vehicles of a certain car brand are controlled by hackers all over the country at the same time, these vehicles will become weapons that attack humans. Weapons."

This is not alarmist.

So, who is the "200,000 cars of a certain brand" that Director Xiao mentioned? There seems to be only one answer: Tesla.

Car gathering summary

You may not know that among the car recalls in my country in the past ten years, 56 were substantive compulsory recalls.

That is, the State Administration for Market Regulation (formerly the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine) must intervene in the investigation, conduct interviews, and even publicly name names, in order to force car companies to carry out "active" recalls.

Of course, it is an exception for someone like Ideal to still show off his strength and say that he was not recalled after being interviewed. It is even more bizarre for a company like Tesla to go abroad to cry and smear us after being ordered to recall its products, which are obviously defective. All this shows how difficult and difficult China's recall work is and how great the resistance is.

No wonder Xiao Lingyun said: If the proportion of recalls affected by defect investigations in the future only accounts for 30%, it will be the success of our country's recall system.

For this reason, mobilizing the masses is a solution.

Articles 4 and 5 of the General Administration’s notice clearly stipulate that any interested party can report OTA problems to the General Administration, and those who conceal defects will be severely punished in accordance with the law. Then Che Jujun will be a good person and announce his contact information:

Contact person: Hou Jiwei, Quality Development Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation

Tel: 010-82262117

E-mail: vrecall@dpac.gov.cn

Special website for defective car clue reporting:

/fw/wyc/201902/t20190216_288547.html

“I think Ideal and Tesla are great. They have single-handedly changed the rules of the entire industry. Thumbs up.” A KOL said on Weibo.

The less about this kind of black humor, the better.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.