BYD apologizes after wrong wheels ship on its Great Tang SUV

A rim is the metal part of the wheel that the tyre sits on. The Great Tang has what carmakers call a staggered setup. That means the rear tyres are wider than the front ones, so the front and rear rims are different sizes too.

On some cars, the two were swapped. The wide rims that belong on the back went on the front. The narrow rims for the front went on the back.

• Correct front: 8J-wide rims with 255/50R20 tyres.
• Correct rear: 9J-wide rims with 275/45R20 tyres.
• On affected cars: 9J rims at the front and 8J rims at the back.

The "J" number is the rim width in inches, so the two sizes differ by about 25 millimeters, roughly one inch. The rims look almost the same. The only clear difference is a marking stamped on the inside.

In real life Imagine wearing a size 10 shoe on one foot and a size 9 on the other, then being told they are both "technically shoes." You can walk, but you would notice.

Only one version of the car has been named: the single-motor, rear-wheel-drive Great Tang with the 950 km range rating. The dual-motor all-wheel-drive version has not been mentioned in the problem.

BYD has not said how many cars were hit or which production batches. That is the main open question for owners.

By the numbers: the Great Tang starts at over 230,000 yuan in China, about $34,000. BYD sold about 14,000 of them in October, its fourth month in a row above 10,000.

Owners noticed first. Many complained on social media and on a Chinese consumer complaint site. They described "abnormal handling" in daily driving and trouble keeping the car straight on highways.

Some said their tyres wore out fast. A few said they had blowouts. Dealers and owners then checked the rims and found the swap.

Why it matters: the car looked fine from the outside. Because the rims are nearly identical and already wrapped in tyres, a worker walking past the line would struggle to spot the mistake. Industry experts note that a short test drive may also miss it if nothing feels wrong right away.

A tyre is built for a certain rim width. Put it on a rim that is too narrow, and the sidewall, the soft wall on the side of the tyre, bulges out. The tyre then touches the road in a slightly different shape.

That shape is called the contact patch, the small area of rubber that actually grips the road. A changed patch can alter steering feel and how the tyre carries weight in corners.

The rear tyre here is the wider 275 size. A common guide lists 8.5J to 10.5J as the right range for it, so an 8J rim sits just below that. The front 255 tyre can use rims from 7J to 9J, so a 9J rim at the front is at the edge of its range.

In short, the parts still fit. They just are not working the way the engineers planned. BYD says its own tests found no effect on driving safety, and that it sees no safety risk.

BYD blames a wheel supplier. It says a coding error at the company that assembles its wheels, based in Hubei province, caused the rims to be tagged and shipped in the wrong order. One report names the supplier as Hubei Boyu Industrial Co Ltd.

BYD says it has fixed the coding mistake. The supplier has also added a visual check on its production line so that workers can catch a swap before the wheels leave the plant.

A supplier is an outside company that makes a part and sells it to the carmaker. Modern cars have thousands of such parts, so one wrong label upstream can end up on a finished car.

BYD says it will make three things right for owners of affected cars:

• Free repair: an inspection and new rims at no cost.
• Travel help: a replacement car, or payment for transport costs while the car is being fixed.
• New warranty: the full warranty period restarts on November 11, 2026.

A warranty is the carmaker's promise to fix certain faults for a set time. Restarting it gives owners a fresh clock, which matters if they worry about wear on parts like tyres and suspension.

The mix-up arrives while China's regulators are watching car quality closely. In August 2026, several government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, started a campaign on how consistent and well made new road vehicles are.

That same month the ministry listed findings from sample checks on a number of cars. One was BYD's Qin L DM-i plug-in hybrid, whose fuel use in one test mode was higher than the company had declared. The ministry said those findings concerned sampled cars and were not fleet-wide recalls.

In September, BYD recalled 183,211 older Tang and Qin cars in China. The cause was a brake pedal stopper that could crack and fall off, leaving the brake lights on. Those cars were built between 2014 and 2022, so it is a different problem on much older models.

The wheel mix-up is neither of these. It is a new assembly mistake on a brand-new car. But it adds to a busy few months for BYD's quality teams.

The Great Tang is BYD's flagship in its Dynasty line of cars. It is a large electric SUV, more than five meters long. It uses LFP batteries, a lithium iron phosphate type that is popular for lasting a long time and being safer than some alternatives, in 105.8 and 130.2 kWh sizes.

BYD rates the top version at up to 950 km of range on China's CLTC test, about 770 km on the stricter European WLTP test. It also supports BYD's Flash Charging, the company's very fast charging system.

BYD plans to launch the car in Europe and other Asian markets by the end of this year or in early 2027.

Watch for three things. The first is how many cars BYD says are affected, which it has not shared. The second is how quickly dealers swap the rims. The third is whether cars bound for other countries are checked before they ship.

The company's apology also names the supplier's fix, a visual check on the line. That is a simple step, and it is the kind that often works best.

• If you own a Great Tang: check your rim markings with a dealer, especially if the car pulls, drifts on the highway or wears tyres quickly.
• If you are buying one: ask the dealer to confirm the rim sizes front and rear, and keep the paperwork.
• If you live outside China: nothing has been said about export cars yet, so watch for BYD's notes before the car arrives.
• If you follow EVs: the car's performance and range are not in question here. This is a factory assembly error.