Previously, only in the movie to see the bridge, actually happened in real life.
According to surging news reports, June 22, 17:22 Xu, Anting Town, Anto Road 56, Shanghai Automotive Innovation Port, Building 8, 3rd floor, a test car from the Azera fell from a high place, resulting in Du Mou and Zhang Moumou two test drivers were injured, 120 after the scene will be two people sent to the Anting Oriental Liver and Gallbladder Hospital for treatment. Among them, Du died due to rescue, Zhang Moumou by the hospital after surgery, the effect is not good, in the early morning of the 23rd was announced dead.
For the cause of the accident, the Internet rumor is that the test driver hung the wrong gear, step on the wrong pedal caused the accident. In this regard, on June 23, the official response of Azalea said, "According to the analysis of the scene can be initially confirmed, this is a (non-vehicle causes) accident."
Many netizens are puzzled why the test drive was conducted on the 3rd floor. There are also voices that believe that the accident exposed the chaos of the management of the prototype car within Azalea, and that perhaps the company has become a daily routine in order to pursue efficiency and test in the parking building.
Some experts told Radar Finance that the car in question was a test car, which means that the software was a development version rather than a production version, and even the car may not have been a production car. The data entered by the test driver during the test may have allowed the decision-making system to incorrectly output the calculation results, resulting in the vehicle's executive level to quickly start reversing, and even the test driver did not have time to carry out emergency treatment, or the door was also locked, coupled with the large inertia of the electric car, accelerating fast, and ultimately resulting in a tragedy.
Radar Finance noted that last summer, the company had a series of "fatalities", and since then, sales have gradually fallen off. And now, it's time for Azera to start delivering new models in a row, hoping to turn the tide.
Will this "accident" disrupt Azera's original plan?
The ET7 test car crashed out of the building, and the company's successive "rollovers"
There are a lot of conflicting stories about how the company crashed out of the building. One of the more widely agreed upon statements is that the car accelerated abnormally with the rear end facing outward for some reason, and then crashed through the exterior wall and guardrail and flew straight to the ground.
According to Azera, "At around 17:20 on June 22nd, an Azera test vehicle fell from the third floor of the parking building at the Shanghai Innovation Port, killing two digital cockpit testers, one of whom was a colleague of the company, and the other an employee of one of our partners. After the accident, the company initiated an investigation and analysis process in cooperation with the public security department. According to the analysis of the scene situation can be initially confirmed, this is a (non-vehicle causes) accident."
In this regard, the Internet rumor a Azalea public relations director Ma Lin on the crash of the statement said: "This thing, the first sentence, thank you all. Spraying or, commenting or, are for the good of Azure, if this can not feel, I do not deserve to be in this seat. The second sentence, when to speak out, can not speak out, there are specific reasons; words how to say, that sentence should say should not say, have considered, there are various reasons, of course, no matter what the reason. My consideration seems to be incomplete and wrong; everyone's opinion is right. The third sentence, the company is sad, never cold, are my responsibility, we continue to improve. The fourth sentence, the water army can not get me down."
"The structure of the first line is clearly biased in favor of exoneration, and the second is biased in favor of humanistic care. Cars ultimately serve people, and for Azera, which is clearly a "user-oriented enterprise," lowering its care for people is a disservice to its brand power. Luckily, it corrected itself in time and was able to salvage the situation."
What was the scenario before the accident?
Radar Finance noted that some voices attributed the accident to the test driver being in the wrong gear and stepping on the wrong pedal. In this regard, Feng Shiming pointed out that the two people who died were professional testers, and the probability of operational error is theoretically not very large.
Zhang Xiang, director of the New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute at Jiangxi New Energy Technology Vocational College, believes that the sudden start of the Azera is very likely to be in the process of adjusting the parameters of the human, the software aspects of the system has a problem.
Typically, the smart car is divided into a perception layer, a decision-making layer and an execution layer. In Zhang Xiang's opinion, the scene before the accident should be the test driver of Azera is sending signals to the decision-making layer of the car through the computer, so as to do some tests of self-driving technology, and the reason why we have to try in the parking lot on the 3rd floor, there are a variety of possibilities.
First, the parking lot is located right at Azera's headquarters at the Shanghai Innovation Port, which is probably close to the test driver's lab, which would make it easy to download the data and analyze it back in the lab, which would improve efficiency.
Second, the test driver may have happened to be simulating self-driving technology in a parking lot scenario, which would require finding a real parking lot, which isn't allowed on regular public roads. In addition, Innovation Harbor is a public park that houses many companies, which doesn't rule out the idea that Azure is afraid of having its vehicles exposed.
It's important to note that the state has very strict regulations on car testing, which not only have to be conducted in the required test sites, but also have to be supervised by professional test engineers, and a report card has to be submitted to the relevant departments for approval before testing.
So there are also voices that the accident has exposed the chaos of Azera's internal sample car management, and that perhaps the company has made testing in parking lots a routine in the pursuit of efficiency.
"Right now they (Azalea) are the slowest in terms of intelligence." A major auto-pilot practitioner sighed to Radar Finance.
"Wouldn't the tragedy have been avoided if all the car testing had been moved away from the general office area, and no 'air test' operations were allowed? Wouldn't it have been a bigger tragedy if someone had happened to be passing by at the time?" Feng Shiming questioned.
According to Zhang Xiang's judgment, the car at the time of the incident is a test car, which means that its software or development version rather than the production version, and even the car may not be a production car. The data entered by the test driver during the test may have allowed the decision-making system to incorrectly output the calculations, resulting in the vehicle's executive level to quickly start reversing, and even the test driver didn't have time for emergency treatment, or the doors were locked, plus the inertia of the electric car, accelerating quickly, and ultimately resulting in a tragedy.
It has been reported that the ET7 engineering test vehicle in question had a maximum power of 480kw, accelerated to 100km in 3.8 seconds, and weighed more than 2.5 tons.
However, Zhang Xiang also admitted that the parking lot situation does not represent the state of the car driving on the normal road, the development version of the software may be some features in the test phase does not work. However, the occurrence of the hit will still make a lot of car owners who have already paid the deposit panic, and even cancel the order as a result.
"This incident is very reminiscent of Azera's hit last year, and then there have been incidents of loss of control, including Tesla, that have resulted in the death of the owner. People will feel that smart cars are now technologically immature and need to undergo trial and error, and overall it will definitely have an impact on Azera's sales."
Was there a way to stop the tragedy before it happened?
Public information shows that the ET7 involved in the incident is the first sedan product delivered off the line from Azure, from the Azure side of the introduction given, it is equipped with sensors, controllers, LIDAR and other devices, and Azure previous period of products for vertical comparison, are called luxury.
Specifically, the Azera ET7 is equipped with NAD (NIO Autonomous Driving) autonomous driving technology, which is built on the NIO Aquila Azera supersensory system, NIO Adam Azera supercomputing platform, etc.
Among these, the Azera ET7 is equipped with NAD (NIO Autonomous Driving) autonomous driving technology.
Among them, the NIO Aquila super-sensing system has seven 8 million HD cameras, four 3 million pixel high sensitivity surround view cameras, five millimeter wave radars, twelve ultrasonic sensors, and one of the world's first mass-produced 1550nm ultra-long-range high-precision LiDAR.
In a communication meeting held by Azure on June 22 to analyze the ET7 LIDAR, Bai Jian, Vice President of Azure Intelligent Hardware, described the ET7 as "far-viewing", "clear-viewing", and "stable-viewing" to describe the ET7. "to describe ET7 has a watchtower type LiDAR, it said in the same 10% reflectivity conditions, ET7's LiDAR can detect up to 250m outside the object, while the industry is generally 200m or 150m level.
Why did this top-notch configuration fail to save the lives of the two test drivers?
Some industry insiders pointed out that this is related to the current millimeter wave radar that most car companies carry for their products, are at the level of algorithms do not respond to stationary targets.
Specifically, the ET7 is equipped with a feature called Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) or Rear Crossing Warning with Braking (RCTA-B), which does not work on stationary objects like walls.
Zhu Xiyuan, a professor at Tongji University's School of Automotive and director of the Institute of Automotive Safety Technology, said in an interview that not only walls, but basically all static targets are now difficult for AEB to respond correctly. Because the AEB mainly look at the millimeter wave radar, millimeter wave radar on the dynamic target has the Doppler effect, will not be misrecognized, but it is difficult to distinguish the static target with the road manhole cover, steel plate on the ground, the roadside abutments.
While ultrasonic sensors are able to detect static obstacles, the signal quality is so poor that they can only be used as a warning function, and basically cannot be used as a basis for decision-making under automatic emergency braking. That's why all kinds of smart cars have been known to crash into stationary objects.
Ideal Car CEO Li Xiang said, "The combination of camera + millimeter wave radar is like the eyes of a frog, which is good for judging dynamic objects, but almost incompetent for non-standard static objects."
However, this is not without solutions. As far as body safety is concerned, there is no simpler way than to increase the physical strength of the body.
Previously, in a traffic accident, a Great Wall Automotive WEY brand VV7 was hit by an out-of-control truck behind it while driving normally, causing it to tumble from the overtaking lane to the emergency lane, and then fall 20 meters from the side of the guardrail of the emergency lane under the bridge, but even though the body of the VV7 was badly deformed, all four people in the car also survived.
In contrast, although the Azera ET7 claims torsional rigidity of 37,100 Nm/degree, which is the upstream level of the sedan, and is close to 50% ahead of the Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series, the photos from the accident show that the ET7 appeared to have an extremely deformed roof after falling from a height of 10 meters.
"The panoramic glass canopy is slightly less resistant to compression than a normal roof. Wouldn't the consequences have been less tragic if there had been a more robust roll cage design?" Feng Shiming suggested. There are also netizens accordingly questioned, ruling out design problems, could it be that the body in order to reduce the cost of the overall rigidity of the body caused by the lack of strength?
There were also netizens who suggested that electric cars could not also be limited to the power output of reverse gear, like fuel cars? In the current scenario, fuel cars are limited to 30 km/h when reversing even if the gas pedal is pressed to the bottom, while EV reversing is only accomplished by reversing through the electric motor, which means that the power to go forward or backward is the same.
The challenge of delivering new cars is getting tougher and tougher
In fact, this is not the first time that the ET7 has been questioned by outsiders since it was delivered in March this year.
On the Azure App, a number of ET7 owners mentioned that the new car has exposed rear glass wiring, interior rattles, loose and arched seats, and the damping of the armrest flap needs to be optimized, and other defects of varying degrees.
More seriously, in just three months, ET7 has already experienced two sudden power outages with a total delivery of just over 2,500 vehicles.
For example, on June 11th, a car owner posted on Azure App that his ET7, which had only been on the road for 13 days, suddenly lost power during normal driving, the brakes failed, and he could only rely on inertia to stop the car slowly, and all the electrical equipment was out of order, so the double flashers couldn't be turned on.
Another negative sign for Azera is that the company's product sales have lost their dominance among new car makers since last July.
In the first five months of this year, Azera delivered 37,866 new cars, not only falling behind Xiaopeng, Nezha, Ideal, and Zeropeng in total, but also improving only 11.8 percent year-over-year while Ideal and Xiaopeng improved more than 100 percent year-over-year.
At the same time, Azera is facing strong attacks from its rivals on all tracks. In terms of power switching, Ningde Times has already entered the game; the newly released ES7 new product has also been stolen by Ideal L9.
It's worth noting that while the reasons behind Azera's continued sales decline are complex, including supply chain and stepping on the wrong rhythm of pushing new products, the start of Azera's loss of sales as a new powerhouse coincided with a series of "fatal cases" last summer, according to the timeline.
This article was originally published by Radar Finance
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