Just three years after the purchase, 672 pure electric buses were discontinued due to reduced battery life. Dongguan’s largest bus company sued the seller and the court ruled.

Less than 3 years after they were purchased, 672 pure electric buses were out of service due to battery failure.The largest bus company in Dongguan sued the seller, demanding compensation of 431 million yuan. This case has ushered in the latest outcome.Longzhou Group Co., Ltd. announced today that its controlling subsidiary, Dongguan China Automobile Hongyuan Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "China Automobile Hongyuan"), received the first-instance judgment from the Dongguan First People's Court regarding two sales contract disputes.A total of RMB 51.83495 million in outage losses must be compensated, and the warranty obligations in the relevant contracts must continue to be performed.

It is understood that both cases were caused by the failure and abnormal attenuation of the pure electric bus power battery sold by China Automobile Hongyuan in 2018 during the warranty period.

Among them, the first case is Dongguan Bus Co., Ltd. suing China Automobile Hongyuan and Dongguan Heying Non-Financial Guarantee Co., Ltd., with the original claim amount of 205 million yuan; the second case is Dongguan City Bus Transport Co., Ltd. suing China Automobile Hongyuan, with the original claim amount being 226 million yuan.

The plaintiff, Dongguan Bus, is the largest bus company in Dongguan, and Dongguan Citybus is a 100% owned subsidiary of Dongguan Bus.

According to reports, the litigation dispute originated in October 2018. The plaintiffs Dongguan Bus and Dongguan Citybus purchased 250 and 422 pure electric buses equipped with lithium manganate power batteries from the defendant China Automobile Hongyuan respectively through public bidding.

The manufacturer is Weihong Power System (Huzhou) Co., Ltd., and the relevant contract stipulates that the power battery warranty period is 8 years.

After the delivery of the above-mentioned pure electric buses, starting from October 2021, the batch of vehicles received by Dongguan Bus have successively experienced power battery failures or abnormal attenuation, resulting in large-scale outage of the vehicles.

Since January 2021, Dongguan Citybus purchased 422 pure electric buses with the same power battery during the same period. Some of the vehicles have also experienced similar problems and caused outages.