Passat collision, luoshengmen, SAIC Volkswagen owes an explanation

Posted 2023-06-19 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

Last week, Passat, the flagship model of SAIC Volkswagen, which has led the B-class car market in China for many years in a row, attracted heated discussion in the industry due to its worst performance in c-iasi test evaluation. At the same time, because the test results are quite different from the results of other third-party organizations in China and the similar tests in foreign versions, for a while, all parties' opinions and arguments are noisy, and Passat also falls into the "luoshengmen". On December 23, China insurance automobile safety index (c-iasi) released the evaluation results of Passat's frontal 25% bias collision, which showed that SAIC Volkswagen's new Passat generation got the worst "P (poor)" evaluation, and ranked the bottom of 41 tested models with 44 scores. According to the test video released by c-iasi, the scene of Passat collision is quite tragic. Passat, traveling at a speed of 64 km / h, at the moment of collision, the left front wheel bursts and embeds into the vehicle; the A-pillar deforms rapidly and finally bends at about 90 degrees, while the B-pillar is raised; the front of the door panel is basically disconnected and turned out to the outside; the glass debris is flying everywhere, and the vehicle is offset to the right as a whole. Inside the cockpit, the main driving position air bag opens rapidly but leans to the right, so that the test dummy's face directly impacts the steering wheel. According to c-iasi after the 25% offset frontal impact of Passat, "the test vehicle is not equipped with side head protection airbags, the steering wheel has excessive lateral displacement, and only has minimal frontal airbags, and the dummy's head contacts the hardware structure twice.". Therefore, the evaluation results of Passat vehicle structure, occupant compartment upper intrusion, dummy head, neck, legs and feet, as well as restraint system and dummy motion are all "P". This is also the result that the second model of SAIC Volkswagen was rated by c-iasi after Tiguan L. It is worth noting that, a few days after the release of c-iasi evaluation results (December 27), China Automotive Research Center released the fourth batch of C-NCAP evaluation results in 2019. As a domestic third-party evaluation agency with a history of 14 years, C-NCAP once gave Passat a four-star evaluation in its first model test in 2006; in the 2012 C-NCAP evaluation, Passat built on the new generation B platform of Volkswagen Group also received a five-star evaluation with a score of 47.4 points. Liu Yuguang, then deputy chief engineer of national car quality supervision and inspection center and director of Evaluation Department of C-NCAP management center, said that the new Passat participated in the evaluation performed well in general, especially in the side impact and front 40% impact tests, which showed that the model has a very strong ability to resist the front and side impact. At the moment of Passat collision, Passat's performance in the U.S. is better than that of domestic car's save and subtract behavior? The 25% frontal bias crash test was initially introduced by the American Highway Safety Insurance Association (IIHS) in August 2012, and has always been famous for its strictness, including many high-end car brands and other famous brands. Under the guidance of China Insurance Industry Association, c-iasi is formulated by China Automotive Engineering Research Institute and China Insurance Research Institute of automotive technology based on the experience of IIHS, combined with the current situation of China's automotive insurance and vehicle safety technology, and uses four grades of G (excellent), a (good), M (qualified) and P (poor) to evaluate the overall safety and maintenance cost of vehicles. Since the release of the first batch of test results in 2018, c-iasi has released a total of 41 model evaluations, including joint venture brands such as SAIC Volkswagen Tiguan L and SAIC GM GL8; T77, song max, AX7 and 510 have all obtained "P" rating. However, for Passat, the conclusions drawn by c-iasi and IIHS are quite different. Media reports said that in the previous IIHS test, the last generation of American Passat A-pillar from pq46 platform was almost unchanged, the cab protection was relatively intact, and the driver's seat and the passenger's seat achieved "g" and "m" results respectively; while in the 2020 model test, the American Passat went further, and both tests achieved "g" performance. Some insiders pointed out that as a third-party testing agency, c-iasi is led by China Insurance Industry Association, with 8 insurance companies as shareholders. Its application direction includes providing technical support for insurance companies to underwrite claims and providing reference for consumers to purchase and maintain cars. Therefore, c-iasi's evaluation of vehicle models will involve certain interests. Volkswagen has a large number of brands in China. If it is difficult to guarantee the safety of the flagship Passat, it will not only affect one or two models of an enterprise, which may cause the premium of Volkswagen, Skoda and other brands from the same platform models to rise, and the number of them is extremely fearful. At the same time, as a key contributor to the sales and profits of SAIC Volkswagen, Passat has been the sales champion of domestic B-class vehicle market for many years, and its leading advantage has continued to the end of 2016. Since then, it has been surpassed by "same brother" maiteng and GAC Toyota. From January to November this year, Passat sold 167488 vehicles in total, which is at the critical moment of "runner up competition" with Camry. Some media said that if SAIC Volkswagen didn't pay attention to Passat's safety, it would directly affect its annual "Asian competition", and even affect the sales volume of this generation of models in the next few years. So far, SAIC Volkswagen has not responded to this. So, what's the reason for the new Passat crash from the famous MQB platform? Passat's performance in the U.S. is better than that in China? Does it mean that there is a mismatch behavior in its domestic models For all kinds of questions, in the spirit of being responsible for consumers and enterprises themselves, should SAIC Volkswagen give an explanation to the public as soon as possible? Economic Daily - China Economic Net Auto Channel will continue to pay attention to the incident.

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