The equipment industry development center of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on its website on Monday, asking new energy vehicle (NEV) makers to report vehicle-related fire incidents to the authority within 12 hours or within 6 hours if it involves a casualty, or else face sanctions.
EV makers must also send a more detailed report on these incidents within 48 hours.
The center added that it will conduct its own investigations in severe cases and report these results to the ministry. It also asked all NEV makers to conduct security checks on already sold vehicles and those still stocked in warehouses. The firms need to hand over written reports about these checks before the end of October this year.
The demands came after EV makers including US-based Tesla and Chinese brands including Nio and BYD confirmed via social media channels that some of their vehicles caught fire in different cities of China.
China is now the world’s largest new energy vehicle market with a total of 1.26 million NEVs sold in 2018. This accounted for 4.47% of all automobiles sold that year, which hit 28.08 million units.
In the first five months of this year, a total of 380,000 pure electric vehicles were produced, up 52% year-on-year.