Writing | Reporter Chen Peijun Xu Jincong Liang Luozhe
Editor | Ren Xianbo
According to CCTV news reports, the reporter learned from relevant departments that at about 17:22 on June 22, on the 3rd floor of Building 8, Shanghai Automotive Innovation Port, Lane 56, Antuo Road, Anting Town, Jiading District, Shanghai, a Weilai test car came from a high It fell, causing injuries to two test drivers, Du and Zhang. After 120 arrived at the scene, they were sent to Anting Oriental Hepatobiliary Hospital for treatment. Among them, Du died due to ineffective rescue, and Zhang was declared dead in the early morning of the 23rd after the hospital’s operation was ineffective.
01 The test car accidentally fell from the building
The official statement has been accused of being “cold-blooded”
On June 23, Weilai’s official Weibo released a message saying: At around 17:20 on June 22, a Weilai test vehicle fell from the third floor of the Shanghai Innovation Port parking building, killing two digital cockpit testers, one of whom was killed. Named a company colleague, and the other is a partner employee. We are deeply saddened by this accident and express our deepest condolences to our colleagues and partner employees who lost their lives. The company has set up a special team to help the family deal with the aftermath. After the accident, the company immediately cooperated with the public security department to initiate an investigation and analysis program for the cause of the accident. According to the analysis of the on-site situation, it can be initially confirmed that this is an accident and has nothing to do with the vehicle itself.
The wording of Weilai’s announcement caused controversy.
Just after NIO explained the incident, it caused controversy because of its statement that it “has nothing to do with the vehicle itself.”
Some netizens believe that it is doubtful to announce the results of the investigation so quickly, and some netizens accuse the official response of distancing the relationship between vehicles as “too cold-blooded”. In response, Weilai’s official Weibo deleted the statement and re-issued a statement at 21:02, saying, “At around 17:20 on June 22, a Weilai test vehicle fell from the third floor of the Shanghai Innovation Port parking lot. , resulting in the death of two digital cockpit testers, one of whom was a company colleague and the other a partner employee. After the accident, the company immediately cooperated with the public security department to initiate an investigation and analysis program for the cause of the accident. According to the analysis of the on-site situation It can be preliminarily confirmed that this was an accident (not caused by the vehicle). We are very saddened by this accident and express our deep condolences to the colleagues and partner employees who died. The company has set up a special team to help the family deal with the aftermath. “
NIO reissued the instructions.
According to CCTV news reports, the reporter learned from relevant departments that at about 17:22 on June 22, on the 3rd floor of Building 8, Shanghai Automotive Innovation Port, Lane 56, Antuo Road, Anting Town, Jiading District, Shanghai, a Weilai test car came from a high It fell, causing injuries to two test drivers, Du and Zhang. After 120 arrived at the scene, they were sent to Anting Oriental Hepatobiliary Hospital for treatment. Among them, Du died due to ineffective rescue, and Zhang was declared dead in the early morning of the 23rd after the hospital’s operation was ineffective.
The safety protection issue of testers caused by this incident has also attracted great attention.
02 “Special” people in the hot industry
Many relevant people in the automotive industry said when accepting a reporter from Nanduwan Finance Agency that the safety protection of jobs such as car testers is worthy of attention. “The tester of a car factory is a high-risk occupation, and some things happen every year,” said the person in charge of the operating agency. The work of automobile tester is indeed a high-risk occupation. In the past, some even had to sign life and death certificates, especially for extreme tests.
At present, the new energy automobile industry is in a period of hot development, and the demand for labor was also high.
Liepin launched the “2022Q1 Big Data Report on Employment Trends of Mid-to-High-end Talents”, showing that in the first quarter of 2022, the growth of new energy/electric vehicle jobs ranked second, at 120.09%. Among them, the salary of autonomous driving is 390,500 yuan, and the average annual salary of new energy/electric vehicles is 278,900 yuan.
According to BOSS direct employment data, in 2021Tesla, Weilai,idealThe number of jobs being recruited by new power companies such as , Xiaopeng, and the interest of job seekers continue to rise. Among them, the demand for positions such as autonomous driving research and development, intelligent cockpit design, software engineer, sales, and user operations increased by more than 1.8 times year-on-year.
“The job of a car tester is to keep the danger to himself and bring safety to the customer,” said an automotive industry practitioner. On an online question and answer community, a netizen whose job profile was shown as “engineer in charge of vehicle testing” posted a post saying, “There are many dangerous working conditions during the test, just to expose the problem as much as possible, who can guarantee that there will be no problem. What would users do?”
“When my junior brother was doing summer experiments in Turpan, he lost his life in a car accident and the child was only a little old. Everyone was very sad and shocked, but they also felt that the danger was so close.” Another profile showed that it was a vehicle engineer. The netizen also posted, “As a practitioner in the auto industry, I know that this profession looks calm, but in fact, it is really dangerous when danger comes.” He also said that positions related to vehicle testing are more dangerous than parts and so on. Test to be high.
A reporter from Nandu Wancai Agency found on the official website of Weilai Automobile that there are currently 1,408 positions in its campus recruitment, of which the search for “test” shows a total of 89 results; there are 2,969 positions in social recruitment, of which 163 are related to testing. On the whole, most of these recruiting positions are software and component testing that do not involve real vehicles. Only a very small number of real-vehicle testing positions require the applicant’s driving ability.
For example, the social recruitment position “Functional Safety Testing Expert” requires applicants to have a C1 driver’s license for at least 3 years, rich driving experience, and a mainstream proving ground driver’s license is preferred. At the same time, it also requires 3 years of relevant testing experience. The school recruiting post “Real Vehicle Test Engineer-Autonomous Driving” requires applicants to “hold a driver’s license of C1 or above, and those with team racing experience are preferred.”
Obviously, these positions have high professional requirements for the applicant’s vehicle driving skills. However, a reporter from Nandu Wan Caishe also noticed that these positions did not indicate the danger of work in the job description.
“This group is also quite special,” an industry insider said, because the tests are all corporate products and involve confidentiality. Some test items just passed the test, “If it is reported, will the car still be sold?”
03 The specific details of the test environment have attracted attention
To ensure safety, are there any specific requirements for testing new energy vehicles?
A reporter from Nanduwan Finance Agency inquired about the public documents and learned that the relevant documents issued by the state are mainly aimed at the requirements of new energy vehicle batteries, motors and other devices. For the test environment, autonomous driving (including auxiliary functions) vehicles are tested on the road. Currently, there are relevant local requirements, such as the need to submit a road test application.
“The government will have some production safety regulations, but it is impossible to stipulate them in detail,” an industry insider also told a reporter from Nanduwan Finance Society that each enterprise will have its own set of testing requirements. But because the development process is actually a very complex process, it is impossible to cover everything. A reporter from Nanduwan Finance Agency inquired about relevant documents and learned that there are currently documents issued by local governments, which are mainly of a guiding nature, and do not specify what specific requirements should be required under what kind of environment.
Regarding the current tragedy in NIO, industry insiders once again expressed concern for this group of people. Especially when emergencies occur, the occurrence of danger cannot be completely avoided.
A person in charge of an industry organization told a reporter from Nanduwan Finance Agency that there is a big emergency stop button on the vehicle. In case of emergency, it can be dealt with urgently, but I don’t know if the tester does not have enough time to respond. The reaction time of a person can be 0.5~1.3s. If the time is only about 1s, the security officer cannot respond.
The specific circumstances of the accident are still under further investigation.
04 ET7 self-driving trouble?
Afterwards, NIO confirmed to relevant media that the accidental crashed model was the ET7. It is understood that NIO ET7 will debut at the “NIO Day” NIO Brand Day event on January 9, 2021. As NIO’s first sedan product, the car was delivered in March this year, with a price of 448,000-526,000 yuan before subsidies. According to official information, the ET7 is equipped with NAD (NIO Autonomous Driving) autonomous driving technology and is built on the NIO Aquila super-sensing system and the NIO Adam super-computing platform. As for this rare accident of a vehicle falling from a building, the cause has also attracted much attention, and there are different theories.
Some Weilai customer service said that the accident does not rule out improper human operation, and the situation is currently under investigation. There are also insiders of Weilai car dealers who revealed that the accident may have been caused by switching the reverse gear to the forward gear. According to netizens, the driver accelerated with the accelerator in reverse gear when the incident occurred, causing the vehicle to fall directly from the parking lot after hitting the guardrail. More industry insiders speculate that the car may have an accident during the test related to the automatic parking project. As of press time, there is no authoritative statement on the cause of the accident.
According to the ranking of the delivery volume of new car-making forces in May, NIO sold 7,024 units in May, and the cumulative sales volume from January to May was 37,866 units, ranking fifth. In terms of sales, Weilai has gradually been surpassed by its competitors from the position of the “leader” of the new car-making force. After last year’s product window period, NIO will intensively launch new vehicles this year. Among them, Weilai ET7 started delivery. Li Bin, the founder and chairman of Weilai Automobile, once introduced in the earnings conference call that the new orders of Weilai in May hit a new high, especially the strong performance of ET7 orders. It is understood that a total of 1,707 ET7 units were delivered in May, and some netizens even exclaimed that the car was a big seller just after it started.
At present, several models of NIO are mainly targeting the consumer market of more than 300,000 yuan. It is not known whether this vehicle crash will affect its sales. However, some insiders pointed out that from the official response to the accident, even if “repair” is made afterwards, it may still have a certain impact on its brand image.
