If you own a Zunjie V800, the most useful thing you can do this month is call your service centre and register for the free brake pedal bracket upgrade. Zunjie says it's optional. Take it anyway. A bracket that passes a slow lab test but breaks in three new cars on a test track deserves the fix.
What happened
Zunjie is the ultra-luxury brand JAC builds with Huawei, sold through Huawei's HIMA network. On October 8, car platform Dongchedi (懂车帝) published a test of three brand-new V800s doing repeated full-force 100–0 km/h emergency stops. In all three, the brake pedal's mounting bracket base broke, on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th stop. One car had under 3 km on the clock.
The video went viral. A pedal-force reading of 4,589N spread online; Dongchedi later said that figure was a screen ghost on the camera and that the reading when one bracket broke was 1,612N.
Dongchedi then ran the same test, six consecutive full stops with average pedal force above 1,600N, on a Luxeed V9, a Li Auto, a Porsche, an Avatr and an Xpeng. No breaks.
Zunjie's defence: it passes the standard
Zunjie's first statement, the same night, said its braking system was developed beyond national standards (GB 21670 and GB 7258) and industry standard QC/T 788-2018, and that no owner had reported a bracket failure in real driving.
On October 11, a third-party lab tested the pedal. Result: it met QC/T 788-2018 (1,500N longitudinal force, under 5mm movement), and survived a tougher 3,000N load with no cracks.
That's a static test: load applied slowly, in a lab. Dongchedi's was dynamic: a person stamping the pedal as hard as they can, over and over, at speed. Passing one doesn't disprove the other, and Zunjie seems to know it, because it also said it would redesign the part for more "safety redundancy".
Beijing stepped in
On October 15, MIIT, the Cyberspace Administration and the market regulator SAMR announced a joint investigation team. Three regulators on one car part is unusual. No findings have been published yet.
Huawei's Richard Yu reposted Zunjie's statement with one line: "Justice may be late, but it will never be absent." JAC shares hit the daily limit the next morning. Read that how you like. We read it as Huawei betting the probe clears the car.
The fix: free, optional, starting now
Here's what Zunjie customer service has told Chinese media:
- The upgrade plan was due to be confirmed at the end of October, with work starting in November.
- Cars not yet shipped get the redesigned part at the factory. New buyers don't need to do anything.
- Delivered owners must register at any Zunjie service centre or with the store that sold the car.
- It's free, and customer service stressed it is not a recall. Owners can decline.
That last point is the catch. If you didn't see the news and don't ask, your car keeps the original bracket.
Our take
A failure that only shows up under repeated panic stops is the kind you never want to discover in real life. Zunjie's own move to redesign the part tells you it isn't fully happy with the current one, whatever the lab certificate says.
So: owners, register now and get the new bracket. It costs nothing. Shoppers, a V800 that ships with the updated part removes the question, so confirm the build date before you sign. And everyone else should watch the joint probe. Its findings will decide whether static lab standards for pedal brackets need tightening across the industry.