A CEO's apology can't weld a rear axle back on: Chery's real test

How many apologies does it take to make up for a wheel that isn't there anymore? A CEO saying sorry is the right reflex. But when a car's whole rear axle leaves the body on the road, contrition is the cheap part. The expensive part is proving it won't happen again.

Here is what happened. On October 6, the rear axle of a 2023 Chery Omoda 5 separated in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, taking both rear wheels with it. As Seoul Economic Daily reports, nobody was hurt, but the video spread widely. Chery blamed insufficient weld strength in the rear trailing arms and recalled 8,878 cars in Malaysia. Malaysia's Road Transport Department suspended the model's type approval and new registrations.

On October 21, Chery chairman Yin Tongyue addressed the quality problems at a conference. According to vietnam.vn, he apologized personally to Malaysia's trade and industry minister and said Chery isn't going abroad for quick profits.

The apology is fine; the second failure is the story

This is not Chery's first rear-axle incident on this model. In April 2024, an Omoda 5 axle also failed in Malaysia. Chery recalled 600 cars and replaced the axles on 60 of them, blaming poorly calibrated welding equipment. Two and a half years later, a weld problem in the same area is back on the table.

That is the part no speech fixes. One failure is a defect. A repeat in the same area makes people ask whether the first fix was a patch rather than a diagnosis. A Chinese industry figure quoted by Seoul Economic Daily said the earlier recall may have covered only part of the production volume, without a full review of the welding process. That is his hypothesis, not an established fact, but it is exactly the question regulators and owners will now ask. In our view, it is the right one.

Transparency is where Chery risks losing the most ground

The technical failure is bad. The communication reads worse. According to Yahoo Autos, citing Carscoops, images appeared on October 6, yet Chery Malaysia said nothing officially until six days later, after the regulator had acted. (Other reports date Chery's statement to October 11, so the exact timing is murky.) A commentator also alleged that Chery people tried to pressure outlets into a media blackout. Those are his allegations, and the article includes no reply from Chery, so we treat them as unproven.

Still, days of public silence while video circulates is damaging in itself. A recall that appears to follow the regulator's move looks like damage control, not responsibility. Chery has also said the design involved is discontinued, which may be technically true. But telling customers "that's the old one" is a weak comfort when 8,878 of them are driving the affected cars.

Price got Chinese brands in the door; durability decides whether they stay

Chery is not a small experiment in Malaysia. It entered in 2023 and has ranked fifth in new registrations since 2024, per the same Yahoo report. Nationally, the stakes are bigger: Seoul Economic Daily says Chery earned more than 70% of its total sales abroad last month, and China's car exports surged 73.7% year over year while domestic passenger car sales fell 28.0%.

When home demand is weak and exports are the lifeline, one market's trust crisis is everyone's problem. Add Huawei's brake-pedal supports reportedly breaking in emergency tests, and Beijing drafting rules against rushed "quick-build" development, and a pattern emerges. We think it is a speed-versus-validation problem, not a nationality problem. Plenty of fast launches work out. The ones that don't give every importer's skeptic a headline.

For buyers in markets like Europe, where trade barriers against Chinese cars are rising and brands will have to earn trust, the lesson is practical. Don't ask only about price and range. Ask about recall history, how fast the company disclosed problems and whether the fix covered the whole batch.

Our verdict

Yin Tongyue's words about long-term commitment are the right ones. But they are a promise, not evidence. What would count is a full, public root-cause report, a recall that covers every potentially affected batch, and a quick, open line to regulators and owners from day one. If Chery delivers that, the episode could become a case study in recovery. If it doesn't, the apology will be remembered as the easy bit.

Chinese brands abroad will be judged the way every brand eventually is: by what happens when something breaks. Price opens the door. A rear axle that stays attached keeps it open.