The balance car is out of balance!

In the last quarter of 2015, most Chinese electric self-balancing vehicle manufacturers "ride" a roller coaster that fell from the peak of happiness to the bottom of disaster. At the beginning, the "balanced car" they produced became a hot item for Christmas and New Year gifts, and many miracles happened on overseas e-commerce sales platforms. On Black Friday, a seller on eBay sold 6,500 units, and a seller on Amazon sold 2,500 units, according to the lowest With a price tag of $400, the one-day sales exceeded one million dollars. Manufacturing companies are soft on orders, work overtime to produce, and the price of upstream main control chips has also risen, and even sold out.

But soon, the British government confiscated 15,000 self-balancing scooters with fire hazards at the port. The British National Trade Standards Agency said: "Many goods that were detained and submitted for inspection were found to be used without fuses. This increases the risk of overheating, explosion, and fire.”

At the end of 2015, at least 10 self-balancing vehicle fires occurred in 9 states in the United States, and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission launched a report on the matter. After the investigation, the problem escalated rapidly-major U.S. airlines banned passengers from carrying self-balancing scooters on planes, and Overstock.com, a large discount website in the United States, announced that it would stop selling self-balancing scooters due to safety concerns; then Amazon, the largest e-commerce company in the United States, forced it off the shelves. All unpatented balance bikes and a notice to all sellers requiring safety standard certification.

There are many potential safety hazards in copycat products

Due to this incident, at least 600 domestic self-balancing vehicle manufacturers have ceased production and business, and more than 100,000 people in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain have been affected. Shenzhen was once again relegated to the "City of Shanzhai". The heads of relevant enterprises spontaneously formed a rights protection group, involving more than 200 million US dollars. Wu Bo, an expert in the chip industry and CEO of Anxin Mall, told "CEConline" that the delisting incident of the self-balancing car has brought a great blow to many Chinese self-balancing car manufacturers and chip manufacturers.

"CEConline" reporter interviewed a number of self-balancing vehicle manufacturers and industry experts.

Industry experts said that there are many reasons for the explosion of electric balance scooters. If the three-no or counterfeit products are excluded, the electric balance scooter that has passed the factory inspection will not only explode if charged for a long time, but also The battery may explode and burn due to damage to the charger, poor power contact, or excessive use of the battery.

In order to ensure safety, all parts of a qualified balance car should be strictly tested. For example, batteries that will not explode should be used in the battery. The motor can be safely decelerated when rotating at high speed or when the temperature rises, and it should automatically power off when people leave. When riding fast, when the left wheel of the balance bike encounters an obstacle, the right wheel will automatically sense and adjust the speed, and vice versa.

Because the products of self-balancing scooters are popular too fast and the supply is in short supply, many copycat companies cut corners and make the products have hidden quality problems, such as the battery is not strict, the charger is not up to standard and so on. After the entire industry became popular, cross-border e-commerce sellers also flocked in, turning a blind eye to the patent issue, which eventually led to the intensification of contradictions. Yao Sheng, a brand manufacturer of self-balancing vehicles and general manager of Shenzhen Xinweitel Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out that most of the electric self-balancing vehicles on the market currently use lithium batteries. The price difference is huge. If the charging voltage is too high or the charging time is too long, the protection circuit or the management system will fail, causing the battery to overcharge and heat up, causing the electrolyte to vaporize under high heat, which may cause combustion at light, or explosion at worst. In addition, when the lithium battery is hit by an external force, if the battery is squeezed due to insufficient protection, it will cause a short circuit and generate high heat, and it will also burn or even explode. Most of the knockoff products are made of low-quality and cheap materials, resulting in uneven quality of finished products.

Affected by this incident, foreign customers have greatly increased the safety requirements for self-balancing vehicles, requiring batteries and chargers to have UL and UN certification. Amazon requires all balance car sellers to provide a series of documents including UN38.3 battery certification, UL1642 battery safety standard and UL60950-1 charger standard to prove that the products they sell meet safety standards.

Yao Sheng, who has the relevant certification, said that he is very happy that Amazon can start cracking down on low-priced products. Only in this way, the safety and product quality of self-balancing vehicles on the market will be more guaranteed. The popularity of knockoff products has led to an imbalance in the market, and the belated "ban on sales" has brought the market order back to the hands of brand manufacturers and quality-assured manufacturers. At present, Shenzhen Customs has taken relevant measures to restrict the export of counterfeit products, and the quality supervision department has also launched a strict investigation on the domestic balance car market.

The patent dispute between two Chinese men

"No one would have imagined that two Chinese men would control the fate of the self-balancing scooter with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. The mainland is charging patent licensing fees, and the other is catching fish in the United States, and the two of them are the real dealers!" said Wu Bo, a chip expert and CEO of Anxin Mall.

On January 5, Ying Jiawei, chairman of Hangzhou Chike Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., said in an exclusive interview with the US-China Times that he has applied for patents since 2009, and has filed more than 150 patents so far. , and through lawyers' representation, applied for PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) and entered more than 100 countries, including the United States. We want to eliminate these fake Li Kui, restore the market's innocence, and reshape the image of Made in China.

Qike cooperated with Suning for its global debut in May 2014 and officially launched in August, setting off a boom in self-balancing scooters. Since then, related counterfeit products have emerged one after another. At the Canton Fair last autumn, Hangzhou Chike came forward through the Canton Fair Intellectual Property Management Committee and successfully removed 37 counterfeit products from the shelves.

Wu Bo told reporters that the U.S. patent for a self-balancing vehicle is an appearance patent applied for by Chinese-American Shane Chen (Chen He, founder of the solowheel) in 2013. He only drew a sketch and proposed a concept, The two wheels are powered by batteries, with a twistable bearing in the middle, and the balance is automatically adjusted by a gyroscope. This product he commissioned several factories to design and produce it but failed. Later, a factory found Ying Jiawei, who was a university teacher in Hangzhou at that time. He changed the automatic adjustment balance to mechanical adjustment balance, so as to truly design this product, applied for invention patents and appearance patents in China and the United States, and founded the Hangzhou rider.

Since then, Hangzhou Chike has adopted the method of patent licensing, charging a licensing fee of about 100,000 yuan for each company and a licensing label of 10 yuan per product. Most factories in Shenzhen routinely give Chike the authorization fee and authorization label fee. Therefore, everyone thought that the patent problem was basically solved. However, at the end of November 2015, the US company Razor acquired the exclusive sales rights in the US market from ShaneChen for $10 million. On December 12, 2015, Amazon received a complaint from Razor's lawyers and removed all self-balancing scooter products from Amazon.

Although Ying Jiawei claims to have applied for patents since 2009, from the patents published on his official website, the earliest one was applied for and approved in 2013. At present, Hangzhou Chike has filed a patent invalidation lawsuit against Razor, pointing out that the patent purchased by Razor cannot realize automatic balancing technology, while Chike owns a patent for mechanical adjustment and balance and has already made a product. This patent battle will be a protracted tug of war, and I don't know how many companies and traders can survive this winter.

It is understood that in August last year, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Quality Supervision set up two projects, "General technical conditions for electric unicycles" and "General technical conditions for electric two-wheeled self-balancing vehicles" in coordinating the local standards work department of Guangdong Province. The standard is planned to be released and implemented next year as evidence for market supervision and industrial and commercial supervision and law enforcement.

After the incident, Guangdong Quality Inspection Institute paid close attention to it and put forward three opinions: organize and hold a patent seminar for self-balancing vehicles as soon as possible to sort out the patent background; , establish quality standards for the self-balancing vehicle industry; actively communicate with patent holders to promote the smooth development of the international trade of self-balancing vehicles.

The hidden worries of the fund's enthusiasm for VR

At the 2016 CES exhibition, VR (virtual video) will become the most popular technology, and 2016 will be the first year of VR industrialization. According to Deloitte's latest Technology, Media and Telecommunications Industry Forecast, VR will become the most important industry trend in 2016. "2015 China Virtual Reality Industry Research Report" shows that the market size of China's virtual reality industry in 2015 was 1.54 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 5.66 billion yuan in 2016 and more than 55 billion yuan in 2020.

The promising future of the VR industry has ignited the confidence of entrepreneurs and investors. In just one month from the end of December last year to the end of January this year, six investments of more than 10 million US dollars were invested in China. A segment of the VR industry. Not only virtual reality hardware devices are favored, but also related virtual reality services are favored. Among them, Baofeng Magic Mirror received B round of financing with a financing amount of 230 million yuan and a valuation of 1.43 billion yuan. Compared with foreign counterparts, domestic VR projects are technically weak, but they still do well in terms of grounding and localization. With the strong help of obtaining funds, the domestic VR industry will enter the fast lane.

However, investors, practitioners and the general public must be cautious and clear-headed about VR. The battle without gunpowder on the balance car profoundly illustrates the importance of innovation and patent protection, and also pours a bucket of ice water for companies that are eager to launch VR projects. Management expert Li Xuejun told reporters that there are risks in any industry. We must take a long-term view, strictly control the quality, and do not rush for quick success. The issue of patent ownership must be resolved before putting into production. In fact, it is not so difficult to apply for technical patents, and the threshold for appearance patents is lower. When the new industry standards have not yet been released, he suggested that enterprises learn from relevant human health and medical standards for certification, use non-toxic and harmless materials to make VR glasses, and at the same time iteratively improve products according to market feedback and technology updates, in order to reduce risks. Gain a foothold in new industries.

Wu Bo pointed out that more and more foreign companies make money from patents. In addition to paying attention to the risks of patents and security, they also need to consider the threshold of software intellectual property rights, and at the same time, they must also guard against supply chain risks, such as core chips. Whether the production capacity can keep up with the market outbreak period. He reminded Chinese manufacturers that they should learn from the experience of self-balancing scooters when considering launching trendy products like VR.