On December 4, blogger "Auto 365 Hotline" disclosed that Mr. Xiu, an SAIC Audi E5 owner in Harbin, Heilongjiang, expressed feeling "discriminated against" by the automaker. While owners of the same model in other cold - climate regions, like Shenyang and Changchun, could use the intelligent driving assistance features as usual, in areas such as Harbin, Daxing'anling, and Suihua in Heilongjiang, as well as Yushu in Qinghai and Nagqu in Tibet, the system automatically deactivated high - level intelligent driving functions when the temperature dropped below 4℃.

Mr. Xiu bought the vehicle on November 14. Neither the official promotional materials nor the sales process mentioned this limitation. He only received a verbal notification of it when picking up the car. Based on his statistics, at least 14 local owners have run into this problem.

The manufacturer's customer service stated that this measure was taken "for safety reasons." They claimed that low temperatures could result in icy and snowy roads, which might affect the system's stability. However, owners raised doubts, questioning whether the technology failed to meet the required standards or if relevant information was intentionally withheld.

Currently, the manufacturer has proposed a compensation of 80,000 points (equivalent to approximately 8,000 yuan). But the owners have turned down this offer and insisted on the restoration of the functions. As of the time of going to press, SAIC Audi has not yet given further responses regarding core issues such as "information concealment before sales" and "the rationale for regional restrictions."