Brake-pedal failures in luxury EV put Chinese cars’ quality in regulatory spotlight
Por Daniel Ren — South China Morning Post – News feed
Advertisement Electric & new energy vehicles Business China EVs Brake-pedal failures in luxury EV put Chinese cars’ quality in regulatory spotlight
Viral video of broken brackets in test of car from Huawei-backed brand prompts ministry action to step up policing of quality
2 -MIN READ 2 -MIN 1 Listen
Daniel Ren in Shanghai Published: 3:30pm, 12 Oct 2026
A safety failure spotted in tests of a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) made by a Huawei Technologies-backed luxury brand has raised doubts about the cars many consumers view as a source of national pride, while prompting regulators to step up policing of quality and reliability.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), along with three other ministry-level authorities, published draft rules on Saturday that would govern testing of new car models. The move came after a video released on Thursday on ByteDance-owned car-information platform Dongchedi showed that brake-pedal brackets snapped on all three Maextro V800 EVs used in a test of emergency braking from 100km/h.
“A car’s brake pedal should absolutely never fail while driving,” the Communist Party’s flagship mouthpiece People’s Daily said in a commentary on Sunday.
Although the specifics of the failures were still under investigation, the newspaper said the incident underscored the importance of strengthened oversight of the country’s “ rapidly developed” EVs . It described the MIIT’s proposed rules as a vigorous response to safety risks on Chinese roads. Select Voice Select Speed 0.8x 0.9x 1.0x 1.1x 1.2x 1.5x 1.75x 00:00 00:00 1x AI-generated voice
