Five Chinese government bodies, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration for Market Regulation, issued a joint opinion on Friday, calling for further strengthening of safety systems for new energy vehicle companies.
The opinion requires the strengthening of supplier management in the industry. Automotive enterprises should put forward clear product safety index requirements for suppliers of key components such as power batteries, drive motors and vehicle control systems. In addition, the automotive industry should formulate a quality evaluation system for suppliers. Also, key component suppliers are encouraged to actively cooperate with the opening of necessary data protocols related to product safety and quality analysis.
The opinion also proposes measures to strengthen data security protection. According to the regulators, enterprises should earnestly fulfill their data security protection obligations, establish and improve the whole process of data security management, and take corresponding technical measures to ensure data security. Enterprises shall, in accordance with the relevant provisions of laws and administrative regulations, carry out safety management of data collection, storage, use, processing, transmission, provision and disclosure, as well as of cross-border data transfers.
In recent years, China’s new energy vehicle industry has achieved remarkable results, with production and sales ranking first in the world for seven consecutive years. With the rapid growth of car ownership, the number of old vehicles is increasing. Meanwhile, quality and safety risks of new energy vehicles still exist, and the quality assurance system of some enterprises still needs to be improved. In addition, new problems related to network and data security have emerged, frequently changing the environment for new energy vehicles.
Under the pressure of rising raw material costs and declining government subsidies, new energy vehicle enterprises have raised prices one after another, but the sales volume has not weakened. At the beginning of the year, the China Passenger Car Association raised its domestic sales forecast for new energy vehicles in 2022, and estimated that the overall sales volume of new energy vehicles would be 6 million, while the sales volume of passenger cars would be 5.5 million.
