China is tightening regulations on battery-powered vehicles and will require its automakers to comply with higher battery safety standards, aiming to reduce risks of fire and explosions in the fast-growing sector.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Monday issued a set of technical standards for the batteries in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, which make up more than half of new car sales in the country.

The rules set out stricter mandatory tests which will require companies to ensure their batteries won’t catch fire or explode in tests with a specified time period, seeking to reduce risks for drivers, passengers and surrounding properties due to what is termed “thermal runaway,” the most common cause of battery-related fire.

The standards, said to have been approved by regulators in March but not publicly available until now, are to be implemented from July 2026. They update a current version dating from 2020 that mandates a five-minute warning if an EV is at risk of catching fire.

They also add new tests relating to crash impacts and tolerance of fast charging.

Sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids, known collectively as new energy vehicles (NEVs), have been outselling gasoline cars intermittently on a monthly basis in China since last year. This far exceeds Beijing’s goal set up in 2015 for NEV sales to make up 20% of total sales by 2025, which was revised five years later to more than 50% by 2035, thanks to government policy support over more than a decade.

A CCTV report in June 2024 said the chances of EVs and hybrids catching fire were lower than gasoline vehicles, despite social media boosts of unverified fire accidents involving NEVs being common in China.

A fatal crash in March involving a sedan made by Xiaomi – which caught fire after hitting a roadside pole at a speed of 97 km/h, with its advance driving assistance system switched on – triggered wide discussions about EV safety in China.

State media have since then urged automakers not to exaggerate their smart-driving capabilities.

(Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; editing by David Holmes)

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