CATL said Tuesday that the Xiaomi SU7 involved in a fatal crash did not carry its battery, in response to an investor's question.

A Xiaomi SU7 Standard Edition sparked concern after the vehicle burst into flames following a collision on the Tongling Zongyang highway in Anhui province on Saturday night, killing three people.

Someone asked CATL on irm.cninfo.com.cn, a Shenzhen Stock Exchange platform for investors to communicate directly with listed companies, "May I know if the Xiaomi SU7 car that was involved in the accident on March 29 was using the company's battery?"

To which the Chinese battery maker responded Wednesday morning, "Hello investor, not our batteries, thank you for your concern."

Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun disclosed at the March 2024 launch event that the standard version of the Xiaomi SU7 uses lithium iron phosphate batteries, while the higher-end version has lithium ternary batteries.

In May last year, Xiaomi said in a post that "the standard version of Xiaomi SU7 has a new CATL battery in addition to the existing FinDreams battery."

FinDreams Battery, a subsidiary of BYD, is responsible for the development, production and sales of batteries.

At the time, it noted that standard edition orders that start locking at 0:00 am on May 25, 2024, will be randomly assigned to a Xiaomi SU7 standard edition fitted with either FinDreams or CATL cells.

A person suspected to be a family member of one of the crash victims claimed on social media that the Xiaomi SU7 in the accident was ordered in May last year and delivered on October 19th.

This ordering time just happened to be stuck at the point in time when Xiaomi added a new battery supplier for the standard version of the SU7.

Notably, this is the first major traffic safety accident and crisis on public opinion since the Chinese phone maker built its cars three years ago.

At the close of trading in Hong Kong on Tuesday, the Hang Seng Index was up 0.38% and the Hang Seng Technology Index was up 0.23%, while Xiaomi was down 5.49%.

On Tuesday night Xiaomi's electric car division posted an article on Weibo to answer public concerns.

In a post, Xiaomi Auto described the road conditions and speed conditions at the time of the accident.

The company said that the roadway where the accident occurred was closed with barricades to the self lane and rerouted to the reverse lane due to construction repairs.

And before the accident, the vehicle was in NOA intelligent assisted driving state, traveling continuously at 116km/h. The vehicle detected the obstacle and issued a reminder and began to slow down.

The driver then took over the vehicle into the human driving state, continued to decelerate and maneuver the vehicle steering, and then the vehicle collided with the isolation zone cement pile.

Before the collision, the last speed the system could confirm was about 97km/h.

Xiaomi Auto said, "Based on what is known so far, we can only determine that the fire in the accident vehicle was not 'spontaneous combustion' as mentioned in some online rumors, and it is presumed to be caused by the severe damage to the entire vehicle system after violently hitting the concrete piles of the barrier."

"We have not yet had access to the accident vehicle, and for the time being we are unable to conduct further in-depth analysis," it said.

On the question of whether the doors could be opened after the accident, Xiaomi Auto said, "We have not yet had access to the accident vehicle and are unable to analyze whether the doors could be opened at the time of the accident."

The company also introduced that Xiaomi SU7 standard version has forward collision avoidance assistance function, including forward collision warning (FCW) and automatic emergency braking (AEB) two sub-functions, which works on three types of targets: vehicles, pedestrians, and two-wheelers, with the AEB function working at speeds between 8-135km/h.

It points out that "this function is similar to the industry's same configuration of the AEB function, which currently does not respond to obstacles such as cones and buckets, water-filled barrier, stones and animals."

The accident is still being investigated by local police.