On Nov. 4, an owner of a 2026 BYD Tang EV with the 950 km rear-drive powertrain went public with a complaint that the big electric SUV would not hold a straight line on the highway. Within a week the cause turned out to be mechanical and almost comically simple: the wheels were on the wrong axles.
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By Nov. 5 more owners were filing the same complaint, and on Nov. 11 BYD admitted that some cars had left the factory with the wide rear wheels bolted to the front and the narrow front wheels bolted to the rear. The company apologized, offered fixes and restarted the warranty clock on every affected car.
Which wheel went where
The mix-up involves two different rim widths. CarNewsChina’s report of Nov. 8 says the standard setup for the Great Tang, sold in China as the Tang or Da Tang, puts 8J rims with 255/50R20 tyres at the front and 9J rims with 275/45R20 tyres at the rear. On the affected cars those pairs were reversed, and the outlet says the problem appeared limited to the 950 km rear-drive trim.
Owners described abnormal handling, trouble driving straight at highway speed, and worry about tyre wear. CarNewsChina also relays a tyre-fitment argument: the 275/45R20 size is rated for rims from 8.5J to 10.5J, so an 8J rim at the rear sits below that range. The outlet says that can affect the contact patch, steering response and sidewall support, with possible effects on cornering at speed. Those are the outlet’s engineering reading, not a finding by BYD or a regulator.
The paper trail starts with owners. NTD, citing The Paper, dates the first public complaint to Nov. 4, and CarNewsChina says complaints also went to 12365auto.com, a Chinese consumer platform for car problems, and it cites a WeChat account called 3YC User Report as its original source. As of that Nov. 8 report, BYD had not acknowledged the issue; the public admission and apology came three days later.
BYD’s explanation and the safety dispute
BYD’s account, as reported by Carscoops on Nov. 11, is that a coding problem was to blame and that the wheels will be replaced, with warranty periods restarting from Nov. 11, 2026. The company said on Weibo that the error has been fixed and that visual inspections were added to the production line. Carscoops adds that BYD described no effect on safety or handling and has not said how many cars were affected.
More detail on the cause comes from NTD’s account, which attributes a code entry error at a wheel sub-assembly supplier to the misassembly of part of a production batch. NTD, citing the statement, says BYD told owners the issue poses no safety risk and that the production fault has been resolved so it will not recur in later batches. Man of Many reports the same supplier-data explanation, places the supplier in Hubei province, and says BYD’s inquiry finished before the apology.
Owners’ own reports pull the other way. The complaints name unstable tracking on highways, slower steering response and shaky cornering, which is hard to square with a statement of no effect on handling.
A recall without a published count
Carscoops calls the episode a recall, and the remedy fits: BYD is offering free inspections, professional wheel swaps and a full vehicle warranty reset, and Man of Many adds loaner cars and secondary visual checkpoints in the assembly software. What no source supplies is a number. The affected-vehicle count is unknown, and a search for a formal filing with China’s market regulator turned up nothing, so the action reads as a company-announced correction rather than a documented regulatory recall.
The scale of the possible exposure comes from sales. CarNewsChina cites China EV DataTracker for 10,997 domestic Da Tang deliveries in September, and Man of Many puts October at about 14,000. Only a fraction of those cars would carry the wrong wheels, since the report ties the problem to one trim and one batch, but BYD has not said which batch or how large.
The model itself is new. The Datang entry on Wikipedia describes a large six- or seven-seat Dynasty-range SUV riding on a 3,130 mm wheelbase and measuring just over 5.2 meters long, with a listed range of 850 to 950 km, which is why the 950 km rear-drive version that owners complained about is the long-range model. Man of Many quotes a starting price of 239,900 yuan for the Da Tang.
Dealer and owner inspections, according to CarNewsChina, were how the swap was first confirmed, and owners were asking for a full set of correct rims and tyres, a full inspection and extended warranty cover on chassis parts. BYD’s offer meets the first two and restarts the warranty clock, but the sources do not say it extends chassis coverage.
The open question is the count. Until BYD or a regulator publishes how many cars left the factory with swapped wheels, owners cannot tell whether their own car is one of them without a service-center check.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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