GWM Haval H6 Problems

It sounds like the fact that Haval’s warranty on this car of seven years/150,000km as a commercial vehicle (as opposed to unlimited kilometres for a privately operated vehicle) was not fully explained to you when you bought the car. Either that or you didn’t advise the dealer of your intentions for use of it.

However, I wouldn’t be too worried about the car falling to bits at the 150,000km mark. Modern cars (even cheaper ones) are pretty robust things these days, and provided they’re serviced properly, I don’t think 250,000km is too much to ask. That said, your car is a hybrid, so the life of the EV battery is probably the biggest question mark, and not something we can speculate on with any accuracy as the Havals using this tech aren’t old enough to have started failing yet.

The best bet is to be fastidious with your servicing and keep a close eye on the car’s habits and performance including its fuel economy. Because you’re driving the car a lot, you should be pretty well tuned in to the normal noises it makes and the way it feels to drive. Any change in this is when you need to start looking deeper.

The best advice here is to disconnect the battery and contact the dealership. Any time there’s odd electrical behaviour combined with a burning smell, there’s a decent chance you have an electrical short-circuit on your hands. And that can easily lead to a fire that could destroy the car and anything near it.

By disconnecting the battery, you’re removing the power source that is making something hot enough to produce the burning smell. The constant beeping, meanwhile could be a symptom of the same thing as the shorted or damaged wiring allows the warning beeper to continue blaring away even though the ignition is turned off.

This occurs more often than you think and it’s often caused by overtightening of the sump plug when the old oil has been drained out and the new stuff is ready to go in. Generally speaking, the sump plug will be screwing into either a thin metal oil pan or a rather soft alloy sump. Either way, too much torque on the spanner that tightens it can easily strip the treads and leave you stranded. This is far from just a Haval problem – many makes and models have suffered the same fate.

The fix is usually to get the vehicle to a workshop where the mechanic can either drill out the messed up threads and cut a new thread to take an oversized sump plug. Done carefully, this can often be achieved without removing the sump.

It sounds as though the material the dashboard structure or skin is made from has started to collapse or degrade in some other way. If the structure beneath the vinyl skin of the dashboard fails, you could conceivably wind up with a mis-shapen dash.

While that might sound trivial, it’s important that this gets fixed as this part of the dashboard houses the airbag. And if the opening for the airbag is not the right shape or is compromised somehow, it could affect the correct deployment of the airbag in a crash. And the consequences of that aren’t hard to imagine.

The message you’re seeing is trying to tell you that there’s something in the car that is draining the main battery. It probably has nothing to do with the key fob’s battery at all.

It could be that the car’s battery is failing (even though it’s not that old) or the charging system is not doing its job of keeping the battery topped up. Have you fitted any aftermarket accessories? Something like a dash-cam, if not fitted properly, can drain a car’s battery overnight. In fact, this is a more common problem than you might think.

Although it’s an inconvenience to lose your car for any length of time, it might be the only way the service team can diagnose the problem and attempt a fix. We like to remind each other that car makers have obligations under consumer law, but it also pays to remember that, as the consumer, you also need to give the manufacturer the opportunity to put things right if it can.

The best solution would be for the dealer to provide a courtesy car while yours is in dry dock.

Yes it is. All engines use a small amount of oil, but recently, car makers have started using low-tension piston rings to reduce internal friction and save fuel. In turn, that means some modern engines consume a bit more oil than some older engine designs. That has led some car owners, more used to seeing very small levels of oil consumption, to become concerned when their new car consumes more oil than their old one. But this is pretty normal and the fuel saving is deemed worth the trade off.

Your level of oil consumption is absolutely normal and is no cause for concern. As with any car, however, it pays to keep an eye on the dipstick between services, as modern, low-friction engines and ever-longer service intervals mean some have ben caught out with an empty sump before the next service is due. Checking the oil every month is a good idea; checking it every week is an even better one. What you’re looking for is a change to the usual oil consumption rate, as well as making sure the oil is between the low and full marks on the dipstick.

Plenty of owners of cars (not just Havals) with this type of 'intelligent' cruise-control have complained about it. The problem occurs at highway speeds on any road with a corner on it. At which point, the vehicle decides it's travelling too fast and slows down, sometimes actually applying the brakes. Depending on whether you simply want a comfortable journey or you've just overtaken a B-double, this can be anything from annoying to dangerous.

I've heard reports of Haval dealers having a software upgrade which can be uploaded to the car during a service which eliminates this element of the adaptive cruise-control. It would be worth asking your Haval dealer whether it's available yet.
Some owners have actually resorted to physically covering the front camera so the car no longer knows there's a corner approaching. We definitely don't recommend that as it might interfere with other safety features.