Chery Malaysia had a theory: the best way to prove your battery won’t kill anyone is to try.
So they hauled a PHEV battery pack into the open air, in front of more than 100 people, and lit it on fire. On purpose.
The battery — the same unit inside the Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 PHEV — took a direct flame for eighty seconds. No explosion. No runaway fire. Just a battery that looked unbothered.
This wasn’t a one-off. Chery rattled off a list of what it had already put the battery through elsewhere: collision and rollover tests in China, seawater immersion in Indonesia and Qatar, desert burial in Kuwait, an offset crash in South Africa, a scraping test in Mexico.
And then, at the bottom: live ammunition fire. In Ecuador.
No explanation was given for the Ecuador choice. None was needed.
The battery carries a 10-year, 200,000km warranty and a five-star Asean NCAP rating. Chery mentioned this too, briefly, the way you mention a footnote when the main text already made the point.
Battery anxiety hasn’t gone away despite years of safety data. Chery’s answer is to make the anxiety watch while the battery wins.
