China Weighs EV Innovation Against Safety With Inspections of XPeng, Aion

China’s industry regulator conducted on-site safety inspections at factories of electric vehicle makers GAC Aion and XPeng Inc. after a series of reports about their product defects.

The inspections focused on evaluating the companies’ intelligent connected vehicle safety, design and development capabilities as well as production consistency, with sample vehicles and batteries randomly selected for testing to determine their compliance with national standards, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Friday.