A preposterous product demo video from a Chinese car safety expo has been making the rounds and cracking people up this week. In the clip, a boxy SUV is shown firing off its enormous underbody EV battery with enough force to make it look like a James Bond weapon. From a safety perspective, it seems a little suboptimal.
It looks like the idea is to jettison a battery if it starts to catch fire, but, as people in the comments on Bluesky and Facebook and everywhere else online have been quick to point out, turning a huge slab of burning battery into a missile is not particularly safe for anyone anywhere near the car.
I don’t even understand how such a system would even be expected to work in an emergency in the first place. Beleaguered batteries often swell, which would prevent one from being cleanly ejected through a fitted slot. And if it were to catch fire, surely the blast-off mechanism would be among the first components to take damage.
Sure is exciting to watch, though!
The demo vehicle looks a lot like, but not exactly like, a BAIC Jishi 01. (There are quite a few Chinese SUVs that strongly resemble the current-gen Land Rover Defender.) Initial coverage from Chinese outlets reported that the battery-ejector product was a collaboration between the China Automobile Technology and Research Center and a company called Joyson Electronics, but that was quickly denied.
The CATRAC is a real organization; it did just host a big public safety event, and we can clearly see the date of September 19, 2025, referenced in banners in the background of the video. But the whole stunt and its recording are really bizarre. China has incredible automotive technology—it makes no sense that something like a burning battery missile concept would be trotted out. China also most definitely has very good cameras, yet every upload of this wacky demo seems to have been recorded with a potato.
I would be willing to give the organizers the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were trying to showcase how violently a battery can be ejected unintentionally in a crash. Then again, the banners behind the car say “battery launch technology,” so, I guess they’re not kidding around? I haven’t been able to dig up an explanation that really makes sense, but I have a feeling if you haven’t seen this video yet, you’ll get a kick out of it like the rest of the internet has.
Got a tip? Or any idea what the heck is going on here? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.