Three snapped brake pedals and a probe, then Huawei's brakes go on sale
A Huawei-JAC luxury van broke three brake pedals on camera, erased $870 million of JAC's value in one session and drew a three-ministry probe. Eight days later GAC opened orders for the first car carrying Huawei's fully electric brakes, on one trim only.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
On October 8, Dongchedi, the car content platform owned by ByteDance, published a closed-course test Chinese social media could not stop replaying: three new Maextro V800 vans, each built by JAC Group in partnership with Huawei, doing repeated full-force stops from 100 km/h. On all three, the brake-pedal bracket fractured. The first two pedals snapped on their third and fourth hard stops; the third van, bought new to rule out coincidence, broke on its second. In the footage the pedal drops into the footwell, and the driver has to throw the gear into Park to finish the stop. 12
$870 million gone by the close
The market did not wait for any investigation. JAC Motors shares fell the 10 percent daily limit on October 8, closing at 24.72 yuan and erasing about 6.2 billion yuan, roughly $870 million, of market value in one session. The V800 is not a mass product; it went on sale in August at 766,000 to 1.016 million yuan, the top of China's domestic luxury market. 13
The same badge goes on sale
The probe moved fast. On October 15, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said a joint team with the Cyberspace Administration and the market regulator would verify the brake reports, and Maextro promised to cooperate and fix the pedal by the end of October. Huawei's chairman answered that truth will prevail. 35 Then, three days later on October 17, GAC Group's Aion brand opened pre-sales for the Ray 7 sedan, billed as the debut of Huawei's DriveONE EMB, a fully electric brake-by-wire system, and took 6,817 refundable orders in the first two hours. The joint probe itself was still open when it was reported on October 19. 46
A premium nobody else has dared to price
EMB is standard equipment nowhere. Only the Ray 7's 158,800-yuan top trim, 10,000 yuan above the LiDAR version below it, carries the Huawei system; the other four trims use a conventional integrated braking unit. Chery hedged the same way in April, fitting EMB to one of six Exeed EX7 versions. GAC quotes a 78-millisecond response and a 33-meter stop from 100 km/h for its 241-horsepower sedan. 4
The Ray 7's Huawei brake costs 10,000 yuan over the trim below it
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| 530 Driving Fun | ¥128,800 |
| 530 LiDAR | ¥138,800 |
| 702 Driving Fun CATL | ¥138,800 |
| 702 LiDAR CATL | ¥148,800 |
| 702 EMB LiDAR CATL | ¥158,800 |
The defense, and its limit
The part that broke is a mechanical pedal bracket, not the electronic brake system GAC is now selling, so the probe does not directly indict EMB hardware. Maextro says its braking system meets development requirements exceeding Chinese national and industry standards, that no customer car has broken a pedal bracket, and it calls the test a "non-standard extreme testing condition," while still promising every owner a free redesigned part. 1 Dongchedi's testers answer that a stop from 100 km/h is a situation highway drivers can actually meet. 1
6,817 deposit holders decide by November 30
The broken pedal is not the brake being sold, but it wears the same badge, and that badge now sits under a joint investigation by three ministries while Huawei's chairman pleads for the truth. Maextro owes a fix by the end of October; the regulator has promised to release information in a timely manner. 3 GAC's tell is nearer: the 6,817 deposit holders must lock orders by November 30, and the question is how many pay the 10,000-yuan premium for a Huawei brake while Huawei's other brake is on the examiner's table. Deep dive in the sources below to learn more. 4
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
