Maextro Brake Failures Test Luxury Credentials

A built-in coffee machine and a retractable cinema screen helped position the Maextro V800 as a luxurious way to travel. Now a component beneath the driver’s foot is commanding attention. Brake-pedal brackets fractured in three examples of the Huawei-JAC luxury vehicle during tests by Chinese motoring platform Dongchedi, raising questions about the engineering behind its premium positioning.

The video, released on 8 October, showed emergency braking tests from 100km/h. According to the testers, the failures occurred on separate vehicles after repeated braking attempts, leaving their foot brakes unable to operate normally. They said they used a Park-button emergency braking function to bring the vehicles to a stop. The V800, a range-extended electric people carrier, costs up to 1.016 million yuan. Its equipment includes a 41-speaker sound system and an onboard refrigerator, placing the incident within a segment that sells comfort alongside technological sophistication.

Maextro has pledged to improve the brake-pedal bracket base and offer existing owners a free upgrade. The company said no comparable fractures had occurred in customer use since deliveries began and maintained that its braking system had been developed and validated beyond national and industry requirements. It described the video’s conditions as non-standard and extreme, while promising a broader review of design validation, testing and production quality management. Dongchedi disputed suggestions that its testing was abusive.

The controversy has also drawn regulatory attention. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and three other departments published draft vehicle-testing rules on 10 October, according to the South China Morning Post. The causes of the failures remain under investigation, and the tests do not establish the reliability of Chinese luxury vehicles as a whole. For Maextro, however, the immediate challenge is specific: demonstrating that its proposed fix delivers the dependable operation buyers expect, whatever amenities surround them in the cabin.