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After Tesla, Weilai was also pushed to the forefront of the waves due to vehicle fires. On May 19, in response to the second ES8 spontaneous combustion in a month, the relevant responsible person of Weilai replied to the reporter of Beijing Business Daily that the cause was still under investigation. The future of Weilai is not clear due to the fire storm and rumors, as well as the decline in delivery and huge losses.

Fire again

In the afternoon of May 16, a Weilai ES8 near Anli Road, Jiading District, Shanghai, was smoking. Fire officers and soldiers rushed to the scene at the first time to put out the smoke in time. No personal and other property losses occurred at the scene. The vehicle caught fire only 6 kilometers away from Shanghai Weilai Automobile Co., Ltd.

The owner of the car said: "The car has not been modified. It used to run normally. It has been parked in the garage for 4 days (plugged in and not charged). In this case, the car did not catch fire, but only produced a lot of smoke. I heard that it came from the battery - the specific reason is unknown."

The relevant person in charge of Weilai also told the reporter of Beijing Business Daily that the reason for the smog on the vehicle was unknown. Weilai has started the investigation and will publish it in time after the cause is found out.

On May 17, Shen Fei, Vice President of Weilai Energy, issued a document saying that the accident vehicle had been parked for 4 days with a gun plugged in. After being fully charged, the system automatically recharged for many times to keep the battery in a full state for a long time. In view of the increased failure probability of the power battery in the state of high power for a long time, for the principle of safety and prudence, temporary measures will be taken to limit the charging amount to 90% for the dedicated piles and vehicles in the state of networking before the official investigation results are released. For charging in the non networked state or when using a third-party charging pile, unless it is really necessary, it is recommended that you charge less than 90% of the electricity in daily use.

Although Shen Fei said that "the above measures do not mean that the accident was caused by charging" and "this temporary measure affects at most one week", this action still caused dissatisfaction among many users of Weilai. Some users questioned the rationality of Weilai's request to limit the vehicle's charging capacity to 90%, others believed that Weilai should not be "one size fits all" and should give users the right to choose, and some users even requested Weilai to "refund money".

This is the second spontaneous combustion accident of Ulai car in the past month. In the afternoon of April 22, an ES8 under repair in Xi'an Weilai Authorized Service Center burned. The ES8 was severely damaged and its frame almost burned out.

On April 30, Weilai announced the reason for the fire of Xi'an maintenance vehicles on April 22. Wei Lai issued a statement saying that the chassis of the vehicle had suffered a serious impact before it was sent for repair, resulting in a large area of deformation of the left rear shell of the power battery pack and the cooling plate. The internal structure of the battery pack will form a short circuit after being squeezed for a period of time, which will eventually lead to fire.

Security concerns

There were two fires in a month, which questioned the safety of Weilai Automobile. The owner of the car in question raised a question on the official app of Weilai: "The shop owner at the entrance of the basement said that he had smelled the smell at about 4 p.m. and didn't see smoke at that time, so it should be two hours later that Weilai received the car alarm in the background - is it a long time?"

Later, Li Bin, the founder and chairman of Weilai, and Qin Lihong, the president of Weilai, expressed their apologies to the car owners concerned, but did not directly respond to the relevant questions raised by the car owners.

Ouyang Minggao, Executive Vice Chairman of the Hundred People's Association for Electric Vehicles, believes that the frequent occurrence of electric vehicle fire accidents is due to insufficient verification and testing, but the main reason is that the battery is overheated and out of control. According to the website of "CarDriver" in the United States, many factors may cause the electric vehicle battery to overheat out of control, including charging and discharging history, vehicle age, environment, etc.

At present, most new energy vehicles, including Ulai ES8, use ternary lithium batteries. It is understood that lithium is a very active metal, which will react and burn with oxygen once exposed to air. Lithium battery bulge, foreign matter puncture, external force impact, internal short circuit, overcharge and over discharge may cause fire. The high-voltage harness, a key component in electric vehicles, also has high technical requirements for heat dissipation, flame retardancy, service life and conductor resistance.

According to the public information, there are two suppliers of the battery module of Ulai ES8: Ningde Times and Samsung SDI. Samsung SDI is a Korean power battery company, while Ningde Times is a domestic company ranking first in the global power battery sales. In 2018, the domestic market share was 41%. A large number of new energy vehicles are equipped with power batteries produced by Ningde Times. In August 2018, the spontaneous combustion of a Weima trial vehicle caused heated public opinion. At that time, Ningde Times denied that the battery carried by the trial vehicle was a product of Ningde Times.

"In addition to the battery itself, the battery management strategy is also an important factor affecting the battery safety, and different car enterprises differ greatly in this regard." The industry insiders said that at present, it is not completely sure whether the fire of Weilai ES8 was caused by the battery. Even if it is determined that the fire is caused by the battery, it is still necessary to comprehensively analyze the situation of the vehicle's three electric system in order to determine whether there is a safety problem with the battery in the vehicle.

Song Qinghui, an economist, said that the fire accident of Weilai Automobile, to a certain extent, exposed that Weilai Automobile may have serious quality problems, and it is urgent to identify potential safety hazards. In just one month, there are two fire accidents of Ulai cars, which will increase consumers' doubts and distrust of the safety of Ulai cars, and undermine investors' confidence in Ulai.

Iceberg crisis

Spontaneous combustion is just one of the crises we are facing. At present, the pressure of huge losses, rumors and sales decline has been hanging on top of us.

In March 2019, a user who claimed to be a former employee of Weilai and whose account was called "Paper Child" released comments on Weilai's large scale, fraudulent sales, misconduct of employees and other issues on an online Q&A community. At that time, Weilai once refuted that the so-called "false sales" and "substantial sales" were fabricated.

Although the rumor was refuted by the official, in April 2019, Weilai announced that it would make 3% and control the total number of the company to 9500. It is generally believed that the poor sales in 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 is an important reason for Ulai. Recently, it was also reported that there were 70 people in the two offices of Weilai in Silicon Valley, 20 of whom were located in the headquarters office and R&D center in North America in San Jose, and 50 were located in the office in San Francisco. At the same time, the office in San Francisco has been closed.

Profits have always been the heel of Achilles. However, Li Bin, Qin Lihong and other management of Weilai have repeatedly said that Weilai is still in the growth stage and has no specific profit schedule. The financial report shows that the net losses of Weilai in 2016, 2017 and 2018 were 2.573 billion yuan, 5.021 billion yuan and 9.639 billion yuan, respectively, and the losses are expanding year by year.

As the current business pillar of Weilai, new car sales contribute most of the company's revenue. The data shows that since July 2018, the cumulative delivery of the first mass production vehicle ES8 of Weilai in 2018 was 11300, including 7980 in the fourth quarter, and the monthly production capacity has approached 4000. However, in the first quarter of 2019, the delivery volume of ES8 was only 3989, down nearly 50% month on month. At the same time, Weilai expects that the delivery volume in the second quarter of 2019 will still be low.

Influenced by a series of negative news, since March 2019, the stock price of Weilai has been declining and has repeatedly fallen below the issue price. As of the closing of May 17, the share price of Weilai was $4.42, down about 60% from the annual high of $10.64 on February 26.

The insiders said that for Weilai, who was caught in a "troubled autumn", this time it was undoubtedly worse to be caught in a fire storm again. At present, the huge losses and sales pressure faced by Weilai not only magnified the negative impact of the fire storm, but also made it more difficult to calm the storm.

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