The Chinese automotive market has been suffering from a seemingly never-ending slew of complaints related to new vehicles.
According to statistics from third-party auto quality website 12365auto.com there has been a total of 10,362 automobile-related complaints in the first quarter of this year alone, up over 70% from the previous year. The complaints cover a total of 485 models from 123 different brands.
Among the complaints, 86% were due to safety-related issues. In addition to commonly occurring engine and transmission-related problems, there has been a surprisingly large amount of complaints of engine leakages and issues with same configurations of an automobile model coming with different accessories. Fuel combustion, vehicle body leakage and wheel axles splitting apart were also among the most commonly heard complaints. By comparison, complaints of fuels emulsifying decreased from last year.
The number of complaints related to American brand vehicles increased 87.7% from last year, with a large number of those complaints related to tire quality and vehicle configurations not coming as advertised. By comparison, the amount of complaints related to Japanese and European brand vehicles grew by 47.7% and 44.6%, respectively.
The majority of complaints this year have been related to new automobiles bought within the last six months. In fact, the amount of complaints related to vehicles bought within the last three months increased 61.47% from last year. The majority of own brand vehicle-related complaints stem from vehicles suffering issues during their first three months of use, while complaints of joint venture vehicles came from vehicles in their first to third year of use.
