Electric Vehicles

The testers even bought a brand-new model just to make sure this was no coincidence—and it wasn't.

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A brake pedal snapping during an emergency stop is just about one of the worst calamities that can happen on the road, and it appears a luxury EV in China carries that risk right now. Three Maextro V800 vans—built by JAC Group and tech giant Huawei—separately suffered three pedal fractures during 60-to-0-mph braking tests, prompting the manufacturer to begrudgingly commit to fix the component’s design and provide owners free replacements.

These tests made the rounds on Dongchedi, a car content platform that happens to be owned by ByteDance, which also runs TikTok. The first two failures happened to low-mileage vehicles, and their pedals snapped on their third and fourth runs. The third failure struck a brand new van purchased later, and its pedal collapsed on the second attempt.

Each failure required the testers to immediately engage the Park gear as a makeshift emergency brake, which does eventually stop the vehicle—though, as you can see in the footage, not quickly. The video below is in Chinese, but it’s not hard to get the gist of what’s going on. The driver presses hard, something audibly breaks, and the pedal falls all the way to the back of the footwell, dangling.

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