Yuneec drone quality issues cascade from unit to unit

Buying a Yuneec drone means living with quality issues that can run from minor to major, hurting the brand image and raising questions on R&D efforts and learning from customer feedback.

The quality control issues are not unlike those that plagued the U.S. auto industry in the 1970s as companies were more interested in turning out volume.

Those companies kept assembly lines going even as buyers of cars complained of “lemons” and raised a stink with dealers for repairs and replacements–or more ominously turned to manufacturers that stressed quality. This is something already happening with many a Yuneec drone.

Reports have suggested something similar has happened with the Typhoon H series of Yuneec drone.

Talk has centered on a massive backlog of repairs needed for Yuneec Q500 models, another Yuneec drone, that are returned under warranty to the factory where they can sit for more than a month before any work is completed and hopefully sent back repaired. This issue alone has driven a high-volume of customer service feedback complaints about the Yuneec drone.

That means the company is dealing with legacy issues and not as focused on the assembly line production for the Typhoon H, resulting in a need to retool the process and design of the units from initial beta models.

Of course Yuneec is not alone as a company that has a steep learning curve, but the issues appear to be quite visible in the Yuneec drone. Some of the issues with more than one Yuneec drone are constant and call into question where the company wants to be in a competitive industry that has seen chief rival DJI deploy massive R&D resources to develop proprietary technologies, such as Lightbridge 2 to keep communications stable between drones and controllers, and pays attention to issues such as batter life and quality by using high-end LiPo units.

On the other hand, a Yuneec drone pilot needs fixes for the internal WiFi card of Yuneec Q500 –a solder that basically places the antenna in a better position to receive a signal. That seems basic.

For the higher end models, Yuneec has not yet solved problems with the access to GPS satellites needed to ensure better connections and operations. Many a Yuneec drone ends up flying blind. DJI on the other hand has access to more low-earth satellite connections and uses GLONASS satellite positioning, marking a sharp difference.

Those efforts have caught the attention of reviewers around the world.

“Yuneec has also been living in the shadow of DJI for the past few years. No matter how advanced or capable Yuneec’s Typhoon drones have gotten, the company just can’t seem to unseat DJI from its throne,” Drew Prindle writes.

To be fair, Yuneec has added new features that Yuneec drone pilots can tap into in response to industry trends and customer demand, but innovation comes slow.

The DJI Phantom 4 for example has a visual avoidance technology that rotates with the camera, while the Typhoon H uses sonar. Both are good, except in a drone it matters how many objects can be seen and on the Yuneec drone the avoidance system is mounted on the nose of the drone and only detect obstacles if it approaches them facing forward.

 

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