Xiaomi Urgently Recalls 30% of SU7 Vehicles: New National Standard Almost 1:1 Replicates “Xiaomi Fire Explosion Accident” Scene
The State Administration for Market Regulation announced today that Xiaomi Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. will recall, effective immediately, some SU7 Standard Edition electric vehicles produced from February 6, 2024, to August 30, 2025, totaling 116,887 units.
Regarding the main reason for the recall, the aforementioned announcement mentioned that some vehicles within the recall scope may have insufficient recognition, warning, or handling of extreme special scenarios when the L2 high-speed navigation assistance driving function is activated under certain circumstances. If drivers do not intervene in time, collision risks may increase, creating safety hazards.
In March last year, Xiaomi Automotive’s first product, the SU7, was officially launched, with the Standard Edition priced at 215,900 yuan, the PRO Long Range Edition at 245,900 yuan, and the MAX Edition at 299,900 yuan. The vehicle began its first batch of deliveries on April 3 last year, and cumulative deliveries have now exceeded 300,000 units. This Xiaomi Automotive recall of 116,900 SU7 vehicles is equivalent to approximately 30% of delivered units.
Just two days ago, on the 17th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology publicly solicited opinions on the mandatory national standard “Safety Requirements for Intelligent Connected Vehicle Combined Driving Assistance Systems” (hereinafter referred to as “New National Standard”). The standard sets comprehensive safety technical requirements for different functions such as single-lane, multi-lane, and navigation assistance, including human-machine interaction, functional safety and intended functional safety, information security, and data recording. Among them, the standard constructs test scenarios for traffic environments such as road intersections, construction zones, roundabouts, and tunnels, and adds detection and response capability tests for targets such as pedal-type two-wheeled motorcycles, temporary obstacles, and overturned vehicles.
Yicai reporters noted that the New National Standard proposes new requirements for combined driving assistance system tests, especially Section 7.5.8 “Type B Road Environment Construction Zone Detection and Response Capability Test.” This test scenario almost 1:1 replicates the scene of the “March 29 Tongling Xiaomi SU7 Fire Explosion Accident.”
This test scenario requires that the test vehicle, in a system-activated state, travels steadily along the right lane at Vsmaxset cruise speed. The test starts at least 200m from the construction sign and ends when any of the following conditions are met: the test vehicle avoids collision with the vehicle target and traffic cones; the test vehicle collides with the vehicle target and traffic cones; if the test vehicle is an M1 class vehicle, there is still no deceleration or steering action when the TTC (Time to Collision) to the traffic cone is 1.0s; if the test vehicle is a type other than M1 class vehicles, there is still no deceleration or steering action when the TTC to the traffic cone is 3.0s.
At the end of March this year, a Xiaomi SU7 Standard Edition encountered a serious traffic accident on a highway in Tongling, Anhui, resulting in 3 deaths. On April 1, Xiaomi responded: “Before the accident occurred, the vehicle was in NOA intelligent assisted driving state, continuously traveling at a speed of 116km/h. The section where the incident occurred was closed due to construction and maintenance, with road barriers blocking the vehicle’s lane and redirecting to the opposite lane. After the vehicle detected obstacles, it issued reminders and began decelerating. Subsequently, the driver took over the vehicle and entered manual driving mode, continued decelerating and steered the vehicle, after which the vehicle collided with concrete piles in the median strip. The last confirmed speed by the system before collision was approximately 97km/h.” The time from when the driver took over NOA at 10:44:25 PM that evening to the collision with the concrete barrier between 26-28 seconds was only within 3 seconds.
“Automobiles are not simply electronic consumer products and cannot be designed and manufactured in the same way as electronic consumer products. Safety is of paramount importance because once a car safety accident occurs, lives will be lost,” said a senior executive from an autonomous driving field company in an interview with reporters. After intelligent assisted driving accidents occur, the industry pays more attention to how to reduce takeover rates and improve response capabilities in extreme scenarios, with multiple automakers emphasizing the creation of “redundant” intelligent driving safety systems.