Insight into "rush-to-market vehicles": the unbearable rapid pace that the industry cannot sustain

The Brakes Are Applied to "Rush-to-Market Vehicles"

Right at the start of 2026, regulatory authorities have once again tightened the requirements for automobile development, which has drawn a sigh of relief from many veteran automotive practitioners.

A chief software engineer at a leading automaker told 36Kr that in his more than 10 years of career, he has never experienced the radical pace of the past few years:

A new architecture that originally required two years of adaptation before being installed in vehicles now only takes 10 months to be put into use; the two winter tests and two summer tests that were previously required for mechanical verification have been compressed into one winter test and one summer test.

The full-vehicle control software that originally needed 4 months of verification can now be deployed in vehicles in just 2 weeks.

There are also hidden concerns known only to insiders like him: all testing links seem to be retained, but the compressed timeline is accompanied by high-intensity overtime. In actual operation, a project that requires 200 test runs may only end up being tested 30 times; employees may even report that they have completed 100 test runs after only 10 actual attempts.

"Some problems will inevitably go undetected, including potentially high safety-related issues. For example, a large number of Class B issues still exist even after vehicles are sold, such as door handles that fail to pop out."

Since intelligent electric vehicles are universally capable of over-the-air updates, many car companies deliver vehicles with unfinished software development, pinning their hopes on subsequent software updates, which naturally includes using updates to fix problems caused by insufficient verification.

An employee working on assisted driving at a leading new carmaker said, "To improve the braking experience, a version of software with a potential safety hazard of delayed braking timing was pushed to users anyway."

"Since the team thought OTA (Over-the-Air remote online update) could fix any issues later, the head of the intelligent driving division pushed the new version under pressure, and the number of collision accidents immediately surged." According to 36Kr, the head of the intelligent driving division had to resign due to accountability after several hasty OTA updates caused quality problems.

In the mobile phone industry, the R&D cycle of Huawei's flagship Mate series and Xiaomi's digital series phones is about 12-18 months, and the life cycle of a single model is about 2 years.

Now, amid the cutthroat competition in the automotive market, the development cycle of a complete vehicle in the automotive industry has generally been compressed from 3-5 years to 18 months or even shorter. It has also become the consensus of mainstream automakers to launch a full model replacement every two years and a minor upgrade every year.

This "China speed" is the competitive magic weapon of China's new vehicle manufacturing industry, a source of pride for the whole sector; on the other hand, the unrestrained, cutthroat internal competition has also brought about vehicle quality problems.

In August last year, regulatory authorities introduced OTA filing regulations to curb the software chaos caused by the speed race for the first time.

At the beginning of this year, supervision over "rush-to-market vehicles" began to be tightened at the full-vehicle level. On January 29, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revised and issued the "Requirements for Access Review of Road Motor Vehicle Products". One core change is that traditional fuel vehicles are required to complete 30,000 kilometers of reliability tests, while new energy vehicles need to complete 15,000 kilometers. This is the first time that China has incorporated reliability testing into mandatory regulations.

If insufficient software verification can still be remedied through online updates, insufficient hardware verification will force automakers to pay a heavy price once quality problems arise.

Taking the most critical component of new energy vehicles, the power battery, as an example, 36Kr learned from a chief battery engineer that several years ago, the enterprise he worked for tested the cycle life of batteries by running charge-discharge cycles until the battery health decayed to 70%, and only batteries that met the required number of cycles could enter mass production.

But now, constrained by the compressed full-vehicle development cycle on one hand and the maturing battery technology on the other, "some battery manufacturers start mass production when the battery health decays to 80%, and some even do so when it only drops to 90%", the battery engineer said. These batteries have not caused large-scale quality problems so far, but "sometimes battery problems only manifest themselves after years of operation".

The recall of Li Auto MEGA last October is a typical case of lax verification. The deflagration incident went viral across the internet. Li Auto spent 1.1 billion yuan to recall 11,400 MEGA units, and the even heavier price was that the sales of Li Auto MEGA and its pure electric model i8 plummeted sharply afterwards.

The root cause of this accident was the coolant, a process that most automakers no longer pay special attention to as it is considered mature. Multiple engineers involved in the Li Auto MEGA project told 36Kr that neither Li Auto nor its supplier had fully verified the corrosion problem between the newly adopted low-conductivity coolant and the cooling aluminum plate.

In September last year, XPeng launched a recall of some P7+ models due to steering wheel lock failure, which was a major recall case in the industry.

Sources close to XPeng told 36Kr that poor wiring harness contact was one of the reasons for the steering wheel lock failure. In addition, XPeng made certain design changes to a sub-component of the steering system, but did not conduct sufficient wear resistance tests.

"A reliability verification test after a design change requires at least 1-2 months at the component level, and 1 month at the automaker's system level", industry insiders told 36Kr, "but now most enterprises can no longer carry out steering durability tests as thoroughly as they did in the past".

The new regulation introduced at the start of 2026 has targeted supervision at full-vehicle verification. R&D practitioners told 36Kr that the average annual mileage of family cars is usually around 20,000 kilometers, while the mainstream enterprise standards usually cover 100,000 kilometers of testing, so the new regulation has not yet exerted actual pressure on the industry.

However, this move by the regulatory authorities has already sent a clear signal to the outside world: durability and reliability will definitely become the focus of supervision in the future.

The Whip of Speed Drives the Entire Automotive Industry

The hunger for speed is the epitome of the high-intensity competition in China's automotive market.

This cruel underlying logic of the industry was vividly described by Wang Chuanfu, Chairman of BYD, in 2023: "This industry is not about the big fish eating the small fish, it is likely to be the fast fish eating the slow fish."

BYD, which fully understands the rules of industry competition, naturally prioritizes "speed" in its product rhythm: some models under BYD's Ocean Network launch an annual facelift around every six months, and a full model replacement around every two years. The strategy of launching a large number of models and rapid iteration is one of the ways BYD's products have swept the new energy vehicle industry.

Apart from BYD, Geely, the former top-selling private automaker, also clearly understands what "speed" means to its business.

A source from Geely told 36Kr that Geely's product strategy is to follow and benchmark against competitors. After a rival releases a hit model, Geely has to launch a competing follow-up model within half a year to not miss the market window. As a result, Geely has hundreds of car models every year, many of which are developed based on existing platforms, with a development cycle of around 2 years or even shorter.

In contrast, Li Auto suffered huge losses due to its slow pace in 2025.

Li Auto's extended-range electric vehicle series once led the large-size new energy SUV market, but after the company set its product rhythm to a full iteration every 4 years, it was quickly caught up by its peers. Li Auto became the only new carmaker that recorded a sales decline in 2025.

"Our biggest lesson over the past years is that we failed to build industrial barriers: the suppliers we designated for hardware parts would immediately sell the same parts to other automakers without going through any formal designation process", a senior executive at Li Auto told 36Kr, and the catch-up cycle for a hardware part is generally only 6 months to 1 year.

The cross-border entry of leading consumer electronics brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi into automobile manufacturing has continuously escalated this speed game.

Xiaomi Auto launched its SU7 model in April 2024. Within 24 hours of the new car's launch, the number of paid reservations exceeded 89,000. Riding the momentum of this hit product, the SUV model YU7 launched by Xiaomi in June 2025 received 200,000 paid reservations within 3 minutes of going on sale.

Market insiders told 36Kr that past market competition was more like a small number of leading brands negotiating amicably on how to divide the market. "Take the 200,000-300,000 RMB price range as an example: Tesla and Xiaomi now take up half of the market. If we cannot beat them, we can only share the remaining small piece of cake with more than a dozen other brands, so we have no choice but to quickly follow their pace".

The whip of speed drives the entire industry, and even brands with strong momentum like Tesla have to respond to this competitive situation.

A source from a Tesla supplier reviewed the development process of the new headlights for the revamped Model Y to 36Kr.

When planning the revamped Model Y, Tesla did not expect that the full-width taillight would soon become the mainstream consumer preference in the Chinese market. The revamped Model Y project was launched at the end of 2022. "After a year of development, Tesla suddenly required a change to the taillight design, to make a full-width diffuse reflection taillight", the source told 36Kr. At that time, Tesla noticed that new cars from brands including BYD and Li Auto were all using full-width taillights.

From the launch of the design change to final mass production, the total implementation cycle of the new headlight was less than 15 months.

Exterior design is the first part that needs to be confirmed in automobile development. Now that lighting technology and automotive design in the Chinese market are changing rapidly, designs that are confirmed after a 3-5 year development cycle are very likely to be outdated before mass production", industry insiders told 36Kr, "to keep products from becoming outdated, automakers have to speed up their pace".

Automakers are falling into a "prisoner's dilemma" in the pursuit of speed: if competitors move faster, they have to move even faster; if competitors lower reliability standards, it is difficult for them to stick to their own standards — and the "prisoner's dilemma" usually ends with a lose-lose or multi-lose result.

Can speed and safety be balanced? How can Chinese automakers avoid falling into a collective failure situation?

The Trend Is Irreversible, the Bottom Line Cannot Be Compromised

"Speed" has become an irreversible trend in China's automotive industry.

The persistence of veteran automotive industry practitioners on "durability" has its specific historical background. Taking the German market as an example, due to high speed limits, expensive repair costs, and a well-established culture of vintage and used cars, the average vehicle replacement cycle in Germany is 14-15 years. In such a market, cars that are prone to breakdowns and not durable cannot be sold at all. That is why German brands repeatedly advertise that their durability test mileage can reach millions of kilometers.

However, the current situation of the Chinese market is completely different. Data from the China Automobile Dealers Association shows that the average vehicle replacement cycle for new energy vehicles has shortened from 6-8 years for fuel vehicles to 3-5 years. Facing the technological wave of AI large models being installed in vehicles and the gradual implementation of L3-level autonomous driving, it is uncertain whether consumers are still willing to use a car for 15 years.

"The cost of a 30,000-kilometer durability test is at the million-yuan level", the source said, "consumers only need a car that can run 100,000 kilometers. Who will bear the extra cost if enterprises conduct 5 million kilometers of testing?"

Braking verification should also be adjusted according to regional characteristics. The maximum speed limit on Chinese roads is below 120km/h, which is hugely different from the unlimited-speed driving environment in Germany. Therefore, selling cars in Germany requires ensuring that the vehicle can brake to a full stop at any speed up to 260km/h, while in China, consumers at most drive up to 130km/h.

R&D practitioners told 36Kr that some Chinese automakers' internal control standards for braking performance are only 140km/h, "which can greatly shorten the development cycle, since the main responsibility for speeding accidents lies with the drivers themselves".

Therefore, the durability standards for Chinese new energy vehicles should not be compared with the traditional old standards.

Speed and reliability are not completely mutually exclusive.

A "win-win" solution is to adopt automotive architecture platforms with standardized components and high shared utilization of the supply chain, which has now become the most mainstream method to accelerate product development.

Supply chain insiders told 36Kr that the shortest cycle for a single vehicle project under Geely, from supplier designation to SOP (Start of Production), is only 6 months. "Some chassis systems are directly reused, and the component reuse rate of the whole vehicle exceeds 70%, which can save 3-6 months of development and verification time".

Enterprises' further pursuit of platformization is reflected in "front-end definition" and "pre-research of technologies".

Taking chassis tuning, the most time-consuming part, as an example, R&D practitioners told 36Kr that at present, most enterprises tune each new car model separately. It takes 1 month to complete two rounds of tuning in the mule car phase to confirm the style; 3 months of fine tuning in the DV phase, 1 month of consistency adjustment in the PV phase; and another 1.5 months of final tuning after trial production. "Even an experienced enterprise needs 6 months to complete the whole process".

After platformization, the R&D team can carry out unified design for all models under the platform in advance, and the chassis tuning cycle can be shortened by at least 50%, with the shortest completion time being only 2 months. "The old model of tuning each car separately is too time-consuming, and the new platform-based model is becoming the industry mainstream".

In the pursuit of speed, the work intensity of automotive practitioners has also been pushed to the extreme.

An engineer at Geely reviewed the period right before the delivery of the flagship Zeekr 9X model to 36Kr: "Thousands of people were involved in the Zeekr 9X project. When rushing to meet project milestones, the thousands of team members worked an average of 12-13 hours per day every month, and many of them could not even get off work before 12 midnight".

In the middle of last year, a few months before the launch of Zeekr 9X, the Meishan factory operated two-shift and three-shift rotations every day for testing. A dedicated team worked the night shift from 8 PM to 8 AM. "Since there are only a limited number of engineering test vehicles and the timeline is tight, we have to take turns using them".

In contrast, foreign brands that still maintain a 3-5 year automobile development cycle have completely different working conditions for their employees. "The lights are almost never on in BMW's Beijing office at night; the Mercedes-Benz team in Germany can still work from home 3 days a week now", industry insiders told 36Kr.

Under competitive pressure, foreign brands are also speeding up their development cycles to survive in the Chinese market.

Mercedes-Benz R&D practitioners told 36Kr that the localized development of the long-wheelbase pure electric CLA launched in 2023 took more than two years. "For the long-wheelbase GLE to be launched in 2026, the current planned cycle from project launch to SOP is only 13 months".

Automobiles are irreversibly evolving towards intelligent terminals, with continuous evolution of development tools, process optimization, and maximum elimination of wasted working hours. The shortening of the automobile development cycle is also becoming an irreversible industrial trend.

However, automakers must never compromise on the quality bottom line amid the speed race.

In 2010, Toyota recalled more than 10 million vehicles worldwide due to the "brake gate" incident. Then president Akio Toyoda personally admitted that Toyota expanded too fast, ignored personnel training and quality inspection, and laid hidden dangers for automobile quality problems. After the incident, Toyota's reputation faced a collapse of trust, and its sales in many regions declined for years.

In 2013, Volkswagen's annual sales in China reached a historic 3.27 million units. Behind the soaring sales, the company compressed the verification cycle, leading to concentrated outbreaks of gearbox hazards. Not only was it exposed on the annual 315 Gala, but it also had to recall nearly a million vehicles as required by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, becoming a landmark event in the field of China's automotive industry supervision.