Tesla and eight other automakers said on Friday (Aug 21) they will recall a total of about 4.3 million vehicles in China over concerns that doors may be difficult to open in an emergency, marking the country’s largest automotive recall.
The recall remedies range from software updates to warning labels and improved markings around door handles.Beijing has this year increased oversight of the EV industry and introduced tougher safety requirements, as automakers, locked in a fierce price war, roll out technologies in the world’s largest vehicle market.
China has also said it will ban concealed door handles from 2027, making it the first country to phase out a design popularised by Tesla and widely adopted by domestic Chinese EV makers.Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment, while Geely and Xpeng declined to comment. Xiaomi said it does not have additional information beyond the regulatory notice.
Leapmotor said it was committed to safety. It said the upgrade involved only a warning label and upgrading the power-window control software, but that it was “managing and filing it in accordance with the recall process out of a sense of responsibility to our users”.Most of the actions, classified as product recalls under Chinese regulations, target emergency mechanical door-release handles that regulators say may be hard to locate or operate in a crash — a defect that has drawn scrutiny after several cases of passengers trapped inside burning vehicles.
Chinese state media reported in October that the driver of a Xiaomi SU7 sedan died after a crash and fire because passersby could not open the doors to pull him out.
The scale of the recall reflects both the size of China’s auto fleet and regulators’ increasingly aggressive scrutiny of safety defects as vehicles become more software-driven.
The automakers, including Tesla and Xiaomi, will install warning labels free of charge to identify the handles, while most will also deploy over-the-air, or remote, software updates.
Tesla’s recall is the largest, reflecting how many vehicles it has sold with this type of handle.
Reuters
