Recall of Guangqi Honda Accord

On August 8th and 9th, 20 19, Guangben and Dongben issued recall notices respectively, and 222,674 vehicles were recalled for 20 19, 2020 Accord (model year confirmed by the manufacturer) and 20 19 INSPIRE. This batch of more than 250,000 Honda cars was recalled, which was related to a large number of related car owners publishing cases of vehicle stalls in rainy days on platforms including the car quality network, which caused widespread media attention. From the fermentation of public opinion to the announcement of the recall, the two Honda joint ventures obviously learned the lesson of the oil increase incident last year and responded quite quickly. Despite this, Honda, whose engine technology is highly respected, has once again made low-level design mistakes, which still makes the industry feel incredible.

Driving in rainy days is usually dangerous. The tenth generation accord set off public opinion.

In fact, in the past two months, Chezhi.com has received complaints about "insufficient power" and "flameout" of several Honda models. After careful analysis, Chezhi.com found that although the fault descriptions were similar, the problems of "power loss" and "flameout" reflected by Civic, UR-V, CR-V and other car owners were mostly determined to be caused by carbon deposition in spark plugs after testing in 4S stores. The data shows that such problems often appear on old models.

The situation of Guangqi Honda's 10 Accord is quite different, with a large number of complaints. Before Guangben announced the recall on August 8, a total of 47 Accord owners reported the stall problem to the car quality network (see the above figure for the proportion), and the direction of the problem was also very clear. Almost all problems occur in rainy days or very humid conditions. Crucially, these cases occurred on the latest 1.5T model, and involved two manufacturers. The characteristics of congenital defects can be described as coming to the fore. Due to the serious impact on driving safety, after failing to get a quick response from the manufacturers, some car owners increased their voices to defend their rights, which attracted media attention and quickly developed into so-called stall doors.

Judging from the regional distribution of faulty vehicles, the vast majority of vehicles with flameout problems are concentrated in rainy areas in the south, with Guangdong Province accounting for the most, accounting for 3 1%. In addition, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces all accounted for more than 10%. Combined with the time of the problem, most of the complaints about the "flameout" of vehicles are concentrated in the rainy season in the past two months.

It takes 1.5 hours to recall the defective vehicle due to inhalation of condensate.

There are various speculations about what caused the "stall" problem of Honda 1.5T engine in rainy days. According to the recall announcement, it is determined that "due to the design of air velocity at the outlet of the engine intercooler, a small amount of condensed water may accumulate at the outlet of the intercooler when the vehicle is driving in a high temperature and high humidity environment such as rainstorm. In this case, the condensed water droplets are sucked into the combustion chamber during the rapid acceleration, which leads to the engine catching fire. In extreme cases, the engine may enter the protection mode, resulting in the limited acceleration of the vehicle during driving, which has potential safety hazards. Guangqi Honda Automobile Co., Ltd. will install a device to optimize the outlet wind speed of the intercooler for vehicles within the recall range free of charge to eliminate potential safety hazards. "

A piece of service information obtained according to the car knowledge. The key to this recall is to install an inlet flow regulating pipe at the outlet of the intercooler (below). The whole process only needs four steps: removing the front bumper, installing the front bumper, clearing DTC by computer and installing the bumper. It takes about 1 half an hour. According to the data, the cost of this imported flow regulating pipe to solve this defect does not exceed that of 30 yuan.

Realistically speaking, from the fermentation of public opinion to the recall of vehicles, Honda's two joint venture car companies in China have indeed made very efficient feedback. After all, the condensed water is sucked into the combustion chamber, and the more serious consequence is not only the limited acceleration, but also the early reaction may make more car owners avoid danger. According to the complaint data, before the recall, there were four cases of flameout complaints about the 10th generation Accord 1.5T model of Guangqi Honda. Among them, Mr. Huang, the owner of the vehicle from Wuhan, Hubei Province, said that during the normal driving of the vehicle, the engine suddenly shook violently, and the vehicle immediately lost power and turned off. At this point, the instrument's multiple fault alarm lights have been on. In rainy days, especially on highways, this is an extremely dangerous vehicle failure.

However, if measured by higher standards, Honda China and its two joint ventures could have done better to avoid the current embarrassing situation. According to the data, until August 7th, 20 19, the two companies were still producing defective vehicles, which shows that Honda and the two joint ventures really realized the seriousness of the problem at the last minute. As early as July 19, 15, 2065438, 2065438, 2009, 2065438, 2009, 2009, 2009, 2009, 2009, 2009.

Domestic joint ventures need to reflect on Honda's technical research.

Looking back on the whole process, an industry expert believes that in the short term, due to the rapid reaction of the production enterprises, it can be expected that the stall event of Honda engine will rapidly cool down, at least at the level of public opinion, but there is still doubt about the long-term negative impact on Accord and even Honda. After all, Honda has always been favored by consumers all over the world for its powerful and reliable engine technology. Especially in China, a large amount of Honda powder has always been attached to Honda products, which is the main reason why the automobile market in China is so bad this year, but Honda has maintained nearly double-digit growth. In this context, Honda's oil increase door and stall door appear one after another, which of course makes the transformation of its small turbocharging seem clumsy. More importantly, the strength of Honda's engine R&D system is questionable. Whether it is the increase of oil or the design error of intercooler, it is a low-level R&D error and should never be made.

Ever since it was discovered that Honda's latest generation 1.5T models appeared stall risk in batches, Chezhi.com's technical team has been demonstrating and analyzing the reasons. Based on the existing data, it can be concluded that there is a chance to find defects in engine bench verification and vehicle verification, which is very inappropriate today. This shows that at least in Honda, high humidity environment may be missing in vehicle verification.

In the current market environment, Japanese car brands, mainly Honda and Toyota, have ushered in a rare bright moment, but Dongfeng Honda and Guangqi Honda have reversed their cars one after another, apparently suddenly encountering an accident when accelerating their growth. However, combined with a series of similar recall cases of other joint ventures, the problem of China's weak voice in core technologies is once again highlighted. In the stage of technology development and verification, it seems that China needs to assume what responsibilities and obtain what rights. Otherwise, similar things may happen again.