Maextro V800 draws 3-agency brake probe after 2,092 September retail sales

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) have formed a joint investigation team to examine reported brake pedal bracket fractures on the Maextro V800, the flagship MPV built by JAC (SSE: 600418) and sold through Huawei's HIMA alliance. The probe follows the model's first full month of handovers, in which V800 retail reached 2,092 units in September, up from 181 in August. Terminal registrations rose to 2,079 from 200.

The MIIT notice, carried by Xinhua at 9:43 PM Beijing time on October 15, 2026, said the team was set up on the basis of earlier investigative work and that relevant information would be released in a timely manner. It named no cause, made no defect finding and did not comment on the test method. Maextro said on Weibo that evening it would fully cooperate with the team. Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's consumer business group, reshared the statement with the line "Justice may be delayed, but it will never be absent," according to screenshots shared online.

The dispute traces to October 8, 2026, when a Chinese auto-media platform published a video in which brake pedal brackets on three V800s broke during repeated emergency stops from 100 km/h (62 mph). The testers said the cars came from different batches and failed at the same spot, on the third, fourth and second stops respectively. The platform said a viral 4,589 N reading was a camera artifact and that the true peak pedal force was 1,612 N. The testers said they brought the cars to a halt with the emergency braking function triggered from the Park button.

Maextro answered the same night. It said its braking system was developed to requirements above national standards GB 21670-2025 and GB 7258-2026 and industry standard QC/T 788-2018, and that no bracket base had fractured in customer use since first deliveries. It called the video's setup "non-standard extreme test conditions" but still pledged to optimize the part and offer delivered owners a free upgrade. It also promised a systematic review of design validation, test boundaries and production quality.

On October 13, 2026, Maextro released to owners a summary of bench tests that China Automotive Engineering Research Institute (CAERI) ran on October 11 under report 26-WT-DGJ-N10440. Four pedal assemblies passed the 1,500 N longitudinal-force test in QC/T 788-2018, with permanent deformation averaging 2.61 mm against a 5 mm limit. Further assemblies went through an extra-load test up to 3,000 N and showed no visible cracks or damage. HIMA said the test was commissioned by JAC and that the summary was meant for owners.

The method drew pushback. The extra test applied force at a loading rate of 20 mm per minute, holding each level for 5 seconds and repeating five times, while NEV and battery specialist Yang Weibin said pedal speed in an emergency stop exceeds 300 mm per second. CAERI archive staff said its reports cover only the samples a company submits and guarantee nothing about later mass production. The summary also did not say whether the tested pedals were the original part or the optimized one.

Rendering of the V800 body, which HIMA lists with an 11-by-11 frame and 2,000 MPa door rings; the pedal bracket is not shown (HIMA)

Upgrade timing so far comes from customer service rather than a formal notice. Maextro customer service said the bracket upgrade plan would be confirmed at the end of October, with upgrades starting in November, and that V800s delivered from now on will all carry the upgraded pedal. The same customer service line said deposits on orders already in the lock-in period cannot be refunded.

JAC's stock has carried the swing. Shares fell by the daily limit on October 8 to 24.72 CNY (c. $3.68), after a run of more than 41% over six sessions from September 22 to 30. On Friday, October 16, they hit the daily limit of 22.37 CNY in morning trade (c. $3.33), up 9.98% from the October 15 close of 20.34 CNY, for a market value of about 50.4 billion CNY (c. $7.5 billion) at that price. Even at the limit, the stock was 18.6% below its September 30 close of 27.47 CNY, the last session before the National Day holiday.

The V800 launched on August 5, 2026, from 766,000 CNY (c. $113,950), with higher trims at 866,000 CNY (c. $128,830) and 1,016,000 CNY (c. $151,150). It measures 5,495 mm long on a 3,430 mm wheelbase and is rated at 1,335 km (830 miles) of CLTC combined range, 340 km (211 miles) of it electric. Yu said in July that the V800 and the shorter V680 took more than 10,000 combined orders in their first 23 days of pre-sale. Maextro is HIMA's top brand, and the V800 targets the Toyota Alphard and Lexus LM segment.

Official cutaway rendering of the V800 cabin, laid out as a 2+2+3 seven-seater (HIMA)

Shipments ran on a different clock from retail. V800 wholesale reached 1,813 in September after 1,354 in August, a month in which only 181 units reached retail buyers, which points to cars being shipped ahead of the handover ramp. September retail then outran shipments by 279 units. Sister model S800 recorded 486 retail sales in September, up from 391 in August.

For scale, BYD's (HKG: 1211) Denza D9 premium MPV posted September domestic sales of 5,056, down from 5,532 in August, with 1,252 exports inside its 6,308 shipments. V800 shipments, all domestic, came to about 36% of that in its first full month of deliveries. Those September figures predate the October 8 video, so October's numbers will be the first read on whether the dispute moves buyers.

The joint team could report before or after the November upgrades begin, and either order matters for a model whose own product page lists braking redundancy among its backup systems. Regulators have not said whether they will rule on the bracket design, the test method or both. The open question for the industry is whether a recommended bench standard that sets no loading rate is still enough to sign off a pedal bracket on a flagship MPV.

Conversion rate: 1 USD = 6.7220 CNY as of October 16, 2026.