A recent announcement by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revealed that the updated regulations — an enhancement of rules first introduced in 2020 — require that batteries must not catch fire or explode during thermal diffusion testing, and any smoke released must not harm vehicle occupants. In contrast, the older rules only mandated that an alarm be triggered five minutes before a fire or explosion.

This appears to be quite a tough requirement. Not to say it isn’t a good idea to make things safer.