Wild Vehicle Designs To Try To Compete In China Need To Go, MIIT Decides

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Competing in the Chinese auto market — which is now largely the Chinese EV market — has gotten harder and harder. There’s a constant stream of new vehicles being launched with the latest tech, great features, and shockingly competitive pricing. In order to try to stand out and attract more buyers, some automakers have come up with wild and interesting designs.

However, apparently, those can sometimes come with safety concerns and MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) thinks it’s time to crack down on this a bit. “China will tighten market-entry rules for auto products and bar products that have not undergone adequate testing and validation, as it seeks to address quality and autonomous-driving safety risks,” CnEVPost writes. “Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Vice Minister Xin Guobin announced the plan at a press conference held by China’s State Council Information Office on Wednesday.

“Some aggressive design innovations have been installed in vehicles without adequate testing and validation, while incidents involving vehicle quality and autonomous-driving safety have drawn public attention, Xin said.”

China is clearly leading the world in cutting-edge EV tech. But the companies have been innovating so fast and competing so aggressively over the past two years or so that it has sometimes felt like it is going too fast, like companies are rushing and it can’t be wise.

“MIIT will tighten market-entry reviews and testing and validation requirements for innovative vehicle designs, while stepping up conformity-of-production inspections. […]

“Irrational competition remains a major problem facing China’s auto industry. MIIT will strengthen planning guidance, capacity controls and price governance while promoting industry self-discipline to curb ‘involution-style’ competition.”

Sounds sensible to me. Every time I read and write about EV policy in China, it seems so completely logical, and with solid long-term vision in mind. It’s so dramatically different from the fossil-biased, roller-coaster, ridiculous policies of the United States.