China imposes sanctions on new energy vehicle manufacturers failing to meet production conformity requirements

On December 8, 2020, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced sanctions against new energy vehicle manufacturers that do not meet production conformity requirements. In a bid to promote the new energy vehicle industry, improve the product conformity rate and ensure product quality and safety, the ministry’s first department of equipment industry released administrative guidance to 25 new energy vehicle manufactures that were found, in the supervisory audit for the first half of the year, to have issues such as law violations, and ordered them to make sure of production conformity through written notices. These notices demand that the non-compliant manufacturers carry out their responsibilities; analyze the causes of their issues carefully; satisfy the management requirements of the Announcement on Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products; and resolve the issues within the designated period. Furthermore, according to the degree of violation, the non-compliant manufacturers received administrative sanctions, including revoking or holding off the announcement of their non-conformant products and rejecting applications for the approval of new products of new-energy vehicles, based on the relevant laws and regulations as well as the management provisions of the above announcement concerning road motor vehicles. In addition, the violation information has been added to their corporate credit records and the manufacturers will be kept under stricter supervision.

In the next phase, the ministry is expected to tighten supervision over road motor vehicle products during and after their production; reform the supervisory mechanism in close cooperation with other relevant bodies; supervise new energy vehicle manufacturers through various means; and implement more effective information sharing mechanism and joint punishments so that product conformity, quality and safety of vehicle products will be ensured.

The result of the supervisory audit of new energy vehicles published by the ministry on November 19, 2020 gives details of the issues found (i.e. vehicles that fail to meet production conformity requirements):

1. New energy passenger vehicles — Nine vehicle products of nine manufacturers didn’t conform to national standards or management provisions, such as for capacity and protective functions of traction batteries, capacity of trunks, specifications of tires and labels.
2. New energy buses — Twelve vehicle products of 10 manufacturers didn’t conform to national standards or management provisions, such as for slow driving warning sounds, horns, warning triangles and labels.
3. New energy special-purpose vehicles — Six vehicle products of six manufacturers didn’t conform to national standards or management provisions, such as for capacity of traction batteries, warning signals, slow driving warning sounds and labels.

The full text of the announcement (in Chinese) is available at this web page on the ministry’s website:

https://www.miit.gov.cn/xwdt/gxdt/sjdt/art/2020/art_3b9ac602d9c84d6db5a4bcc080b26488.html