Cause behind Hangzhou's exploding Zotye EV taxi solved

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai June 11) - The city of Hangzhou finally put to rest the rumors behind last month's exploding Zotye electric taxi case earlier this week. The cause? The battery was not installed properly.

The city government held a press conference on the accident on Thursday, auto.msn.com.cn reported.

One of Hangzhou's first fleet of electric taxis spontaneously combusted on the afternoon of April 4 for reasons unclear at the time. The incident attracted nationwide attention and caused the city to temporarily suspend all EV taxis from operating.

The government hired 11 experts from a non-partisan third party to conduct an investigation, which eventually concluded that the fault could not be attributed to defects in manufacture.

The incident put Zotye under a lot of pressure, but company representatives quoted as saying, "in respect to Zotye's future EV development, [the accident] did not influence us much."