On April 26, a Huawei AITO M7 Plus collided with a maintenance vehicle in Yuncheng, Shanxi, and caught fire, resulting in the deaths of 3 people on board. The incident raised concerns about the safety performance of AITO vehicles as the car caught fire, the windows couldn’t be lowered, and the hidden door handles didn’t function properly, affecting rescue efforts.
A user named “Three Momo” posted on a short video platform on April 27, stating that his younger brother was driving the Huawei AITO M7 (a new car only three months old) on the Xiaxian section of the highway in the afternoon of April 26 when it rear-ended a highway watering vehicle. Unfortunately, his husband, brother, and their 2-year-old son died in the accident. The car exploded after the collision, causing severe burns to his brother and son. The video posted by a passerby on Douyin was also removed by the platform.
“Three Momo” questioned why the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) and GOD Automatic Emergency Braking (GAEB) didn’t engage automatically, why the battery caught fire despite good protection, and why the safety airbags failed to provide adequate protection.
A viral video showed the front of the vehicle catching fire first, eventually engulfing the entire car. The hidden door handles didn’t pop out, the windows didn’t come down, and rescue personnel had to resort to smashing windows to rescue the occupants.
On April 28, AITO Automotive released a statement on their official Weibo account, stating that according to national platform data access management regulations, the vehicle was traveling at a speed of 115km/h at the time of the accident, the safety airbags deployed normally, and the characteristics of the power battery pack were all normal. They mentioned that the specific investigation results would be subject to subsequent reports from the traffic police department.
This statement was met with skepticism from a large number of netizens.
A popular Weibo user “Firefly Player Yifan” commented, “At a speed of 115 km/h impact, and the doors didn’t deform? After the accident, the doors and windows couldn’t unlock automatically, so much for intelligence. Did the internal structure get damaged, rendering the emergency brake ineffective?”
Another user “Capa” remarked, “They are asking why the doors couldn’t open, not to mention the front doors, but the back doors, which didn’t deform, were still stuck shut? The answer doesn’t match the question; maybe they need to select their comments more carefully.”
“Why didn’t we see any airbags in the video? You said the airbags deployed, yet there’s no evidence of that. Did the vehicle unlock? Did the windows come down? Did the AEB engage? What was the speed of impact? Is the 115km/h speed mentioned the impact speed or something else? Where are the specifics on the casualties? Why aren’t you providing any of this information,” commented “The Fairness of a Thought.”
Questions were raised by a user named “Li Kaiyun” about why the doors couldn’t open after the collision and why the hidden door handles didn’t pop out. Similarly, “Misan” asked, “Did the hidden door handles pop out? Even if the glass shattered, the doors were still inaccessible from the inside. How are you dodging this issue?”
User “Fairies Xiaofan” raised concerns by saying, “Why couldn’t the doors open? Did the airbags deploy upon impact? Why didn’t the doors unlock automatically? This feature has been present in cars with automatic locking for the past 10 years; why is it missing in a car priced at over 200,000 yuan now?”
Meanwhile, the user “Expressions of Zhixun, Please Leave” criticized the company for only issuing a statement when they couldn’t contain the uproar anymore. They accused the company of lacking ethics for attempting to cover up the accident and delaying their official response until they couldn’t avoid the public outcry any longer.
These comments reflect the growing public dissatisfaction and demand for transparency and accountability from AITO Automotive regarding the tragic incident involving the Huawei AITO M7 Plus.