On the last day of October, Ideal Cars launched a bombshell announcement: the company has recalled 11,411 MEGA models due to insufficient anti-corrosion performance of the coolant. Under specific conditions, this could cause corrosion and leakage of

A week before the recall announcement (on the evening of October 23), an ideal MEGA 2024 vehicle fire incident occurred in Shanghai, which became the direct cause of this recall event.

After the recall notice was issued, Li Xiang himself replied on his Weibo at the first time.

In recent years, besides the current Ideal MEGA recall, there have been frequent recalls by other car companies. As the domestic new energy vehicles are developing rapidly, it rings the alarm for the whole industry.

According to industry data, there has been a significant upward trend in the number of recalls of new energy vehicles from 2024 to 2025. According to the General Administration of Market Supervision and Management, a total of 89 recalls of new energy

The consecutive quality problems have given people a faint sense that the MEGA incident is not just an isolated accident, but a concentrated reflection of systemic issues within the entire industry.

01

To understand the deep meaning of this recall, we first need to go back to the strategic background of MEGA itself.

From 2023 to 2025, it is generally regarded as a "vacuum period for high-end pure electric MPVs" in the industry: traditional luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz's EQT have been unable to be launched on a large scale. Although Volvo's EM90 was releas

It was during such a market gap that Ideal Cars saw an opportunity. As a company that started with range-extending hybrid technology, Ideal Cars urgently need to prove its technical prowess and strategic foresight in the pure electric field to the ca

MEGA is not just about the success or failure of a product, but also about the strategic expectation of Ideal Cars' 'second growth curve'.

Therefore, when the MEGA project was launched, Li Xiang Automobile faced a typical dilemma between first-mover advantage and product maturity. If it chose to spend six more months on more comprehensive material compatibility testing, it would likely

However, it was precisely this strategic pressure that had imposed a certain sense of 'time anxiety' on the MEGA project from its inception.

From a technical perspective, MEGA uses a Kirin 5C ternary lithium battery with a maximum driving range of 738 kilometers, which is also mainstream in products of the same level. Compared with lithium iron phosphate batteries, ternary lithium batteri

The positive material of the ternary lithium battery (lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide or lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide) is prone to decomposition and release oxygen at around 200℃, which increases the risk of combustion. In comparison, t

Previously, the self-ignition case of the Porsche Taycan was related to the fast charging of its lithium ternary battery or bottom puncturing.

Therefore, to adopt the ternary lithium battery solution, it is necessary to reduce risks through advanced battery management systems (BMS) and engineering design. MEGA adopts liquid cooling technology in the cooling circuit of the traction battery a

According to the official description of Ideal Cars, the batch of coolant has undergone 1064 hours of corrosion prevention testing, which seems quite sufficient - equivalent to continuous operation for 44 days. However, reality is cruel: accelerated

The company rushed into production without completing the full cycle of experiments, leaving significant accident risks behind. Therefore, the recall plan of Ideal Cars is to replace the key components such as the power battery and front motor contro

However, the problems exposed by this recall event go far beyond the technical mistake in material selection. It is more like a mirror reflecting the structural conflicts in China's new energy vehicle industry during its rapid development process.

02

If we zoom out to the whole industry perspective, we will find that all participants are involved in an unprecedented speed race in 2024-2025 -- it's not about who runs faster, but about who dares to sprint ahead in uncertainty.

Since the beginning of 2025, over 30 car companies have announced price reductions. Behind this number is the pressure on the overall industry's gross profit margin. Tesla has lowered the starting price of the Model Y to RMB 239,900 and offered a 5-y

In such a competitive landscape, being 'slow' often means being 'dead'.

The product development cycle of the traditional automobile industry is usually 30-40 months. This time span is reasonable in the era of fuel vehicles because the market is relatively stable and technology iteration is slow. But in the new energy era

Behind this "time compression" is the over-reliance of China's new energy automobile companies on the "agile development" model. In the past few years, it is precisely with this rapid iteration ability that China car companies have achieved "overtaki

However, the success of the "agile development" model cannot be simply replicated in core systems involving high safety redundancy and long-term lifecycle validation. The thermal management system of the traction battery is a typical example: it not

The deeper problem is that the current market environment actually penalizes companies that are willing to slow down.

If a car company's sales growth slows for two consecutive quarters, its stock price often drops sharply and the difficulty of financing increases accordingly. Under this pressure, it is difficult for the company's management to explain decisions that

In recent years, there have been many cases of car companies experiencing significant stock price declines due to slow sales growth. As for Ideal, it delivered 33,951 new vehicles in September 2025 with a year-on-year decrease of 36.8%, resulting in

Similarly, NIO's sales in the first quarter of 2025 increased by 40.1% year-on-year but fell by 42.1% month-on-month, with the main brand's sales almost halving. Within 2024, its share price has fallen by 18.6% and its market value ranks at the botto

These cases indicate that in the current capital market environment, enterprises are under tremendous pressure to grow. Once sales growth slows, investors often react immediately, leading to a sharp decline in stock prices, increased financing costs,

In such a context, MEGA events are not accidental but structurally inevitable. If the competitive environment that pursues fastness remains unchanged, we may see more similar quality issues, especially among brands that are eager to shift from tradit

However, from the perspective of the industry, this situation is ultimately unsustainable. After all, in the eyes of consumers, if a car cannot even guarantee its own safety to reach the destination, then no matter how many functions and features it

03

The Ideal MEGA recall event has taught the entire new energy vehicle industry an expensive lesson on engineering awe. The cost of this recall, calculated based on the promise of free replacement of power batteries and motor controllers, may exceed bi

The significance of this event goes beyond a single product quality issue. It is actually sending a clear signal to the industry that the real competitive barrier in the future will no longer be the ability to "iterate quickly", but who can still adh

From the perspective of technological development, the explosive growth of China's new energy vehicle industry in the past few years has been mainly due to rapid breakthroughs in functional innovation: longer driving ranges, more intelligent cabin sy

However, as the market matures and consumer awareness increases, the focus of product competition is shifting from what functions are available to whether the functions are reliable.

In terms of batteries, the true unexplored frontier for Chinese new energy vehicles is vertical penetration engineering expertise in critical areas such as BMS, electric drive, and thermal management. As a comparison, despite being surpassed by AITO,

Among domestic automakers in China, BYD is the only one that simultaneously possesses the capabilities of cell, battery pack, complete vehicle, semiconductor, and thermal management. However, this kind of systematic proficiency cannot be achieved ove

The law of the automotive industry's ten-year grind for a sword is still valid. Currently, the capital market's quarterly assessment mechanism for new energy vehicle companies is overly short-term. In the past, investors often focused closely on deli

In other words, the market should stop the misleading practice of urging car companies to rush in submitting their products and start rewarding those who are willing to take a triple check before submitting their work. Only when the engineering botto

The recall of Ideal MEGA is hoped to be the beginning of such a change.

This article is from the WeChat public account named FunTalk (ID: iFuntalker)