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Weilai Automobile, which has always regarded itself as a "user enterprise", suddenly became the object of centralized complaints from users.

Since July, the number of online complaints against Weilai users has surged. In the past 20 days alone, there were 49 complaints against Wei Lai, with an average of two complaints per day.

Interestingly, 48 of them all point to the same problem-seat design defects. These people who spent hundreds of thousands on Wei Lai found something was wrong after a while:

Lumbar pain.

"The seat cushion is high in front and low in back, the inclination angle is too large, and the headrest is too convex, which causes the sitting posture to bend like a cooked shrimp, and all the pressure is transmitted to the waist, causing discomfort to the waist and even damaging the lumbar spine ..." A car owner vomited.

It's not enough to just spit. The owners of Weilai, who are famous for being good at "doing things spontaneously", opened a group chat in Weilai APP, and the group name was "Seat Voice Group". The LOGO on the group cover is very vivid. It is said that a Weilai car owner specially customized it on a treasure, 30 yuan.

Even if twisted with backache, Wei Lai, who insisted on driving, gave a helpless sigh:

You can't have it both ways.

The shopkeeper's voice was so loud that Wei Lai finally noticed it. Adhering to the spirit of "no right to speak without investigation", Weilai made a round of questionnaire survey, covering nearly 30 thousand users, made detailed data analysis, and finally came to the conclusion:

It's true.

According to the data released by Weilai, about 20% users clearly expressed their dissatisfaction with the seats in the questionnaire.

However, Weilai officials do not admit that this is a design defect. They say this is the user's "comfort experience improvement demand". At the same time, Wei Lai emphasized that the long-term goal is to be the most comfortable car company in China.

I don't know if the owners of Weilai who shout back pain have any objection to this grand goal.

EFREM, an old driver with 25 years driving experience, is a driving enthusiast. He claimed that he could drive for 40 days in a row, travel to 30 provinces all over the country, and only sleep for 3 hours every day. He showed his Guinness World Record certificate and said he was just "a little" tired.

He is also a patient with lumbar disc herniation, the root cause of 1999, and sports injury while playing badminton. But this does not prevent him from driving 23 hours a day, because "he has a deep understanding of this disease and pays great attention to good sitting posture on weekdays", and he has always been well protected when exercising, climbing mountains and even moving bricks.

And breaking all this is only because of a very simple action-buying a Weilai ES6.

In April this year, he got together with relatives and friends. For the first time, he drove for a long time and stayed in the car for four or five hours every day for several days. According to past experience, this is nothing. But this time, when he got home and parked the car, he found something incredible:

"I can't get off the bus."

He limped home from the garage with great effort, "like a dying old man" and was "absolutely bedridden" as soon as he entered the door. He found something bad:

Acute attack of lumbar disc herniation.

Very abnormal. He thought about it and chatted with some riders who were tortured by their seats. After several days of communication, he basically identified the culprit:

"This seat is very hidden."

The SEAT Group was born in this way. Yes, he is the owner of the "Wei You Bend" seat sound group.

In addition to traveling on the road, trading goods, sharing trends, drinking coffee and other hobbies, Weilai car owners got together for the first time because of a puzzling similarity:

Driving to the waist hurts.

This group has also expanded at an alarming rate and has become one of the largest communities in Weilai APP. Since its establishment, the number of seats has reached the upper limit of 2000. The second group has also been established, with 629 people at present. There is also a seat to represent the conference group.

This is not a case. On the car quality network, the first complaint about Weilai seats appeared in April this year, and the complaints about seats broke out in July, and were updated at a rate of several per day.

Even Weilaili is very distinctive. The queen's co-pilot advertised as "the first class of the plane" was also vomited by the owner: "Lying on the waist, sitting on the leg can't touch the ground, the waist can't be backed up, and the seat is still hard."

Some car owners choose to buy inclined plane heightening pads and put them on the seats to adjust their sitting posture. "Every time I pass by Wei, I will take a look inside. The proportion of buying cushions is quite high, indicating that uncomfortable seats are a common problem, not a case. " Some car owners said.

Deep combustion combed the complaints of Weilai car owners and found that the seat problems were mainly concentrated in the following points:

First, the front seat cushion is high in front and low in back, that is, the inclination angle of the seat cushion is too large, and the rear part of the seat cushion is seriously sunken. This causes the owner to "lift his hips" according to the shape of the seat when sitting down. In turn, it leads to high pressure on the buttocks and a sense of oppression at the front end of the thigh.

Some car owners feel that the blood flow outside the thigh is not smooth, the top leg and seat can't sink, and the height from the ground is higher than any other seat. There is no room to put your knees away, your calves can only be perpendicular to the ground, and your left foot can't be placed on the rest pedal.

Second, the seat back has no shoulder support, the upper section is too concave, and the headrest is too convex, which is easy to resist the head. According to this design, the owner sits down and bends his body, and all the pressure is transmitted to his waist. Many owners have waist discomfort or even waist injuries. According to a car owner's metaphor:

Sit like a cooked lobster.

Third, the headrest is hard and you touch your head. Originally, the waist lacked support, the headrest was still hard, and the neck and downward part were suspended. The host sat down and couldn't even lean back.

A Weilai car owner commented: "The front section is too high, the butt is stuck inside, and the back chair can't stand the waist. This anti-human design is really speechless. No matter how you adjust it, there is no comfortable angle. "

A car owner who thinks that he is "physically stronger than most people" and has no trauma or hidden diseases has participated in the Hangzhou Marathon in the last five years and easily ran more than 40 kilometers each time. But he said that "Weilai's car can't run normally" because:

"Every time I drive, I feel like I've been punished!"

This evaluation is shocking. Wei Lai is the representative of the new car-making forces in China, and is also called "Wei Xiaoli" with Tucki and Ideality. Compared with the other two little brothers, one of the most remarkable features of Weilai Automobile is:

Expensive.

What is puzzling is that Weilai, a self-proclaimed luxury brand of 350,000 yuan, can't make a chair well? Why did the famous "Wei Jiajun" who supported Wei Lai suddenly "defect"?

The voice of the owner is getting louder and louder, and finally the boss of Weilai is alarmed.

In April, Li Bin, Chairman of Weilai Automobile, joined the "Seat Voice Group" in Weilai APP, indicating that a special meeting on seat experience has been organized and a special group on improving seat experience has been set up. The scheme and experiment are still in progress. Please be patient.

During the waiting period, the loyal owner of Weilai did not abandon the car. While enduring low back pain, they complained crazily on the complaint website and Weilai APP. Some car owners couldn't wait and left by themselves:

Modify the seat.

For example, the front driver's seat should not be too high in front and low in the back. The solution is straightforward-add a booster pad to the bottom of the seat.

There is a proud photo of the owner. Behind the slide rail of the seat chassis, a cylindrical heightening pad was suddenly inserted. Under the action of lever principle, the seat that was originally attached to the ground was suspended, and the inclination angle of the seat changed.

This is much more useful than buying a cushion to put on a chair. From then on, the owner of Weilai deeply realized a truth that he had heard a long time ago:

Learn mathematics and physics well, and you are not afraid to travel all over the world.

The sound group of the seat is still growing. These car owners who are willing to modify have set up seat audio groups in Weilai APP, such as ES8 modification group, and the number of people in the group has reached 139.

Where there is demand, there is a market. On Taobao, there are even merchants selling seat height pads. On the cover picture with strong cottage flavor, special tips are given in big red font: "For Weilai" and "Special Accessories for Special Cars".

When these car owners were in full swing, some car owners received a "secret mission":

Fill in the questionnaire.

Since April, Wei Lai has quietly conducted a survey, collected and analyzed nearly 30,000 questionnaires about seat comfort experience, trying to find out where the problem lies.

Speak with data. Not the kui is engaged in the Internet.

However, the data seems to be not very friendly to Wei Lai:

ES8 models: "dissatisfied" accounts for 10%, and "very dissatisfied" accounts for 3%;

ES6 models: "dissatisfied" accounts for 15%, and "very dissatisfied" accounts for 6%;

EC6 models: "dissatisfied" accounts for 14%, and "very dissatisfied" accounts for 5%.

Weilai currently has three models: ES8, ES6 and EC6. On the whole, the "dissatisfaction ratio" of the owners of these three models is 13%, 2 1% and 19% respectively. This is equivalent to two out of every 10 Weilai car owners who are dissatisfied with their seats.

This is in line with the owner's complaint. Previous complaints about Weilai seats mainly focused on ES6 and EC6. Weilai also disclosed the seat problem top5 reflected by the owner, which is consistent with the above mentioned. In other words:

There is something wrong with the seat.

Wei Lai's attitude is sincere. On May 23, Weilai officially organized a 3-hour online communication meeting between car owners and executives attended by 30 car owners, and reported the work progress of the seat problem in detail. On July 18, Weilai held another communication meeting in Hefei and announced the detailed solution.

Everything is going on in an orderly way. Then, at the communication meeting in the second half of July, Weilai executives made a demonstration on PPT:

Take out a list of expenses.

If you want to transfer seats, you can add money. According to Weilai's plan, adjust the angle of the main driver's seat basin, 200 pieces; Adjusting the main driver seat cushion, 200; Adjust the headrest and add 200 yuan. After all the expenses are calculated, the front and rear seats of the ES8 model are all adjusted, and the charge is 2600; ES6 and EC6 charge 3000 yuan.

It seems that all the factors have been taken into account, even the timeline has been drawn-July 3 1 Booking accepted, August 8 10 service upgrade.

However, some car owners are still dissatisfied. "Why do we consumers have to pay for the design defects of Weilai car seats?" The ideal thing is to replace the seats for free, and Tesla also recalled more than 200,000 vehicles. Where's Weilai? "

Indeed, where is Wei Lai? Why?

Weilai is very tough: this is not a design defect. According to Weilai's official explanation: "Some users have more comfort needs and need to make personalized plans."

Therefore, in the past few communication meetings, Weilai's foreign language has always been words such as "experience improvement" and "personalized comfortable experience".

"The most important thing in the car is comfort. We really didn't think enough. I think it's ok, so I didn't take it as an important thing. " Li Bin said so.

The question is, regardless of comfort, what will Wei consider?

There is a view that Weilai was stupid when defining products in the early days, and insisted on making sports orientation, including brakes, motors, tires and seats. One of the consequences of excessive pursuit of performance is insufficient consideration of comfort. Embarrassed, Weilai later discovered that people who really buy Weilai models don't care about performance at all. On the contrary, this is an uncomfortable seat, which annoys the user.

Weilai's seat design is really biased towards sports. Li Bin also admitted this point: "The seats of ES6 and EC6 are designed mainly for sports, and the proportion of users taken care of by the comfortable experience is really low."

In fact, Weilai's first automobile product, EP9, is an electric supercar, which focuses on performance labels and has won various awards in various competitions. I learned this from Master Tesla.

But Wei Lai only learned half, picked up sesame seeds and lost watermelon, misleading himself.

The comment of a Weilai car owner is ruthless: "The front row says it is a sports seat, and the edging is probably equal to nothing, which is not worthy of high performance. It's said that it's for home use, the seat is hard, and the lumbar support function is very weak, so a suitable bracket can't be adjusted. The headrest is narrow and hard and cannot be adjusted back and forth. " Then she made a comparison. "Compared with the low-profile sports seat of G30, it's nothing. ES6 can only be rubbed on the ground with G30. "

The seat is not as good as the BMW G30, and the posture is not as good as ideal.

There was a time last year when some car owners were dissatisfied with Li ONE's seat. The problem is that this seat is very good. The ideal measures are: first admit your mistakes-the ideal founder Li Xiang publicly stated that "the comfort level did not reach Li's standard"; Then-free replacement.

However, in Weilai, changing seats is a "promotion of comfortable experience" and there is a charge.

In May, a rider representative spoke and asked if there would be a seat recall in Weilai. Qin feedback: "It is impossible to recall seats in a large area."

The difference between car seats and ordinary seats is that there are not only comfort problems, but also safety problems.

Seat plays an extremely important role in vehicle safety. A car needs to undergo strict safety verification before it is officially sold. Taking the seat as an example, it involves whipping performance test, occupant protection test, and various parts and vehicle-level tests. If the seat parts, especially the skeleton, are replaced later, the switching time will be very long.

If automobile recall is to be triggered, there are obvious defects in manufacturing technology and production process control. For example, FAW-Volkswagen recalled 200 imported Audi A8L two years ago because the seat parameters were incorrect and the process was wrong. Mercedes-Benz also recalled some imported C-class /E-class cars due to seat problems. GM also recalled imported Cadillac CTS due to seat heating failure.

The embarrassment of Weilai car owners is that everyone is different in height and size, and it hurts to sit for a long time, and the seat problem is not very qualitative.

As a representative of China's new car-making forces, Weilai has enjoyed great scenery in the past year. Sales of new cars rank first among the new forces. The stock price has risen more than ten times, and its market value is higher than Didi. It is not easy to achieve this result. Weilai needs to continue to sell cars, the more the better.

According to the owner's analysis, Weilai was miserable in 20 19, and the problem of seat comfort cannot be ignored. In 2020, Weilai sold very well, and the user group drove the whole user group to be dissatisfied with the seats. The ES6 and EC6 models with the most concentrated seat problems began to increase in volume last year, and the seat problems broke out at 202 1.

In the matter of truly serving users, Weilai still has a lot to do, at least starting with comfortable seats.

* The title map is from vision china.