discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
As the electric vehicle market continues to boom here in China, features like front trunks, or frunks as they're affectionately called, and zero gravity seats are redefining the car and the driving experience.
But this design revolution faces some serious scrutiny, and it sparked a global debate about whether these innovations represent real progress or they're just introducing new safety risks that we didn't ask for.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushan and you should.
Up first.
As electric vehicles replace traditional gasoline cars, engineers are rethinking everything about EV car design.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers recently announced that, for the first time ever, China's new energy vehicles, or NEV, sales accounted for over half of all nationwide new car sales in October of this year, proof that the market is booming.
With the market continuing its strong momentum, we now see bold, futuristic features like zero gravity seats.
Yet some of these eye-catching features have drawn some criticism, especially around safety.
So, as we speed into this new era of automotive engineering, there are a couple of questions.
Number one do we need these things?
And number two are they all safe?
We'll discuss all of those questions again, and more so.
Let's start with the frunk.
Actually, just because it has the most fun name of all the things that we'll talk about today, that's a front trunk, Precisely.
And we hear about back trunk all the time.
And the front trunk is just a trunk. at the front, apparently.
But this frunk idea is not.
It's brought up, let's say, by the NEV market lately, but it's not entirely a new idea or exclusive to the electric vehicles.
Take back in the 1970s to 1980s, there's a very old-school car model called the Volkswagen Beetle.
That one's historically featuring cargo compartment under the front yeah, in the front.
My friend had one of those in high school.
It was incredibly unreliable that vehicle, but it was really really old at the time.
I'm not blaming the company or anything, just that particular car.
Beautiful though yeah absolutely um yeah, so that's one example of of where the frunk has been um used for decades and decades.
Right, and it's not just for just common day-to-day cars, but also for some luxurious cars or sports cars.
Take the uh, porsche 911, 911.
Sorry for the correction, but it's necessary.
Thank you.
I'm making myself sound like I know cars when I don't.
But for Porsche 911, its rear engine layout gives it a front trunk capacity of over 100 liters, which is quite nice, with some models reaching as much as 150 liters.
Yeah, absolutely.
You've got your super luxury cars, too.
The Audi R8 has a frunk, the BMW i3 electric hatchback, the Jaguar I-PACE.
Porsche 911, you mentioned that.
And you've got your ultra-performance cars like Bugatti and Lamborghini and McLaren models.
They all have it in the front.
Not just cars, though.
I actually showed you two a video of this yesterday.
The Ford F-150... What's it called?
The F-150 Lightning, I think?
I could be wrong about that.
It's a truck.
It's a huge truck.
And it has a frunk that is bigger than some apartments I've lived in in my life, I think.
It's absolutely huge.
So i i guess the point here is is that the frunk isn't necessarily new, not by a long shot, but still EV makers are trying to use it to their advantage.
How?
Yeah, nowadays the EV makers, they're trying to increase competition over the sizes of their trunk, whether the trunk of their cars, and use it as a selling point.
And one example could be.
This is China National Radio News that of the 12 new models that include both gas cars and EVs that's launched in the well, the news came out in August.
So I guess here by saying in the past two months, that refers to those 12 new model types that came out from June to August this year.
Half of them has a frunk and all of them are nevs and that and some are just surprisingly spacious, because three of out of those six can fit more than 100 liters and one model even reached 240 liters, which i checked is about the same size as the garbage bin, like the giant, over like half a meter, one meter tall.
That's like huge garbage bin.
Two to three luggage luggages, right carry-on luggages.
It's also 500 baseballs.
Okay, i found a list where it was compared, because when you explain something in meters or cubic liters or cubic meters or something, nobody knows what you're talking about.
So here's the thing with that 240 liter size.
Some news has it that ev owners they use their front castle water tank to raise live fish in it.
We don't know who, we don't know where this happened, but yeah, people are doing it and Yeah, of course,
And this is kind of a feature that a lot of these car manufacturers are setting as a selling point, and more and more cars are making their frunk bigger.
Data from Economic View also indicates that in the first seven months of 2025, nearly 40 of new cars equipped with a front trunk had a capacity of over 100 liters.
That is a sharp rise from just 10% during the same period in 2024.
30% more.
Yeah, that's evidence that the EV makers are trying to use the frunk as a selling point to customers.
And I kind of get it.
Some of the advertisements that I saw from the United States were actually kind of dumb but kind of fun at the same time.
They're trying so hard to sell you extra.
Okay, here's one of the examples that I saw.
The frunk, and a lot of these frunks will have a drain at the bottom, right?
Because they're made out of, I don't know what materials, but hard plastic.
And at the bottom, it's like a sink, essentially.
So the advertisement that I saw for one company they had it filled with ice and then a bunch of shrimp on top with some shrimp cocktail sauce located at various points sitting on the ice.
They had turned the frunk essentially into a mobile sushi bar of sorts and you know the people standing around the car were all looking super happy, like it was the greatest thing that's ever happened to them in their lives.
But this is just an example of how car companies are trying to use that otherwise empty space to put their car over the top when potential EV buyers are making a decision.
Yeah, I guess it's very smart in this way, too.
And particularly for any of these, it's quite convenient because, for any of these, their battery or the engine often locate in the rear end or the floor area of the car, so that that huge space at the front, especially for when it comes to larger size of any of these, would be wasted.
And if, if not a frunk, then it could be something else, but here a frunk can be something, that's that it can provide that little bit of size that just help you to carry more things.
Yeah yeah, sorry to interrupt, but how practical is it though?
Because you know, i don't know about you, but i'm probably not going to fill my frunk with sushi and and shrimp cocktail sauce Every weekend.
So what is the actual practical use?
Yeah, I was just getting to that, which is sometimes you just need that little bit of additional space.
As someone who tends to go camping maybe once in a while, I could totally just see that.
Imagine you're out there setting off for a road trip with friends or family and then that little extra storage at the front of your car Just help you to just stuff in a little bit more food instead of luggages and camping gear that you keep at the back of the trunk.
So the frunk can be that ideal spot, that ideal extra little bit of space for items like snacks drinks, small cooler or first aid kit.
That right now occupies my back seat.
Yeah, because you know, when you are in a car and you are using the car for, let's say, a trip, it is always kind of um beneficial when you're having more space, especially that is a separated space, which means when you need some space for a like temperature sensitive items, that kind of space, it can actually help you to store that maybe longer, or It is a space that can that don't need to worry about like a car.
Not accident, but a little shake of your car space, right?
So when you're having that area, of course it's not that kind of main selling point of a lot of these car manufacturers, but they can always be that kind of bonus thing that these companies are offering.
I was looking at opinions online that people had about their frunks, and they do come in various sizes, right?
Some of them in maybe older models or perhaps some newer models too, who don't really care about the size of it.
Some of them are very, very, very small.
They'll fit a gym bag maybe and that's about it.
So that's kind of one of the complaints that that people had, but they did have some positive things to say as well about the bigger ones.
Sometimes they'll come with dividers that are movable right.
So you can create a smaller space and then a bigger space.
You can move it around, So you can kind of adjust it to your own personal needs.
And another one that I thought was really, really interesting This was a person who said when they go to the grocery store and they park in their garage the house door always in front of the front of the vehicle yeah, so to take their groceries out of the car, typically they would have to walk around to the back, get them and then take them around to the front, but when you have a sizable frunk, you just pop the hood of the car and the groceries are right in front of the door.
I mean, it's a small thing that might seem a little bit silly or useless to a lot of people, but again, if these are little tiny details that could make a difference when someone's making a decision about which EV to buy.
Especially when the market is so competitive and a lot of these cars just having the same maybe features and you may just need that one little point to amaze people.
So those are some of the positive things, but what are some of the headaches that people talk about, other than perhaps, the smaller size of some?
Well, first of all there is the safety issue um, Because front stay can impact the vehicle's frontal collision safety structure and, of course, require operational safety measures.
The drivers themselves need to ensure that the hood is safely latched, like it's shut, in a way that it's not going to flip open while you're driving it.
That's the first thing.
I mean, to be fair, that's true. of a car with an engine in the front too.
You have to make sure your hood is securely fastened.
But, for example, in my case, I've never opened the front hood in the three to four years I've been using my car.
So it's not really a concern.
Does it have an engine?
Of course.
No, I mean, it's not an electric vehicle.
I mean, yes, I don't have an NEV.
I have a gas car.
You should pop the hood, see what's under there someday.
Oh, Yeah, that's biomechanical and cool, to be honest.
Thank you.
But either way, that's the first safety concern.
And secondly, we know people come up with all different ideas sometimes.
And even in some advertisement, we see kids sitting inside the frunk and taking pictures and taking videos and having fun.
And that can pose potential accidental risks, especially if kids get inside without your knowledge and experience.
You have the hood shut like that and and that.
Um, there's one.
Sorry, i get that because yeah, that's an extreme example yes, having someone get stuck inside the frunk, although that F-150 truck I was talking about before they have an emergency button inside the frunk in case you do get stuck in there.
That's like a common practice for frunks, right?
They always have interior emergency buttons.
Yeah, but I was reading a more in-depth story about this and what they said made a lot of sense.
Engineers, car engineers, when they put an engine in the front of the car, they know what's in the front of the car.
So in the case of an accident, apparently some engines will release from the chassis of the vehicle, meaning the engineers are kind of in control.
They know what to expect should an accident take place.
With a frunk, engineers have lost all that control.
They don't know what you're going to put inside there.
For example, a gas canister.
Right.
A gasoline canister, something flammable, something like that.
So those in those cases absolutely can become a safety issue for sure.
Yeah.
But frunks aren't the only thing changing in car design.
What about these zero gravity seats?
And maybe I saw something, too, about hidden door handles that are causing safety concerns.
Yeah.
We mentioned this zero gravity seats.
These are.
They allow passengers to recline very significantly and it focuses on achieving a neutral seat spinal posture like the one astronauts experiencing the weightlessness of space.
So, but mostly the cars will only allow you to use this mode when the car is parked, which means it's probably a good choice for people who would like to have a little nap during the lunch break.
Right, it is designed for a lot of people to maybe have a little rest in the car and when they have that kind of need.
And another one is like um, we mentioned before that the handle-less car handle invisible, invisible car door handle.
Yeah, I think we discussed precisely about this topic previously on roundtable too, that this whole idea of having invisible door handles for electric cars or any of these was often aligned with people finding it beautiful.
It's so futuristic and also there's aerodynamics functions like it reduces the wind flowing by the car so that it helps the car to reach to ideal faster speed.
But now experts, they argue that they can pose significant risks regarding occupant escape.
So that's the people inside the car when they try to escape from the car when accidents happen.
It can be hard for those totally electronic, invisible door handles to be opened or to manually handled in so many ways.
And also electronic door handles, they can fail if power is completely cut during the accidents.
One 2024
Elysian test done by CIRI, which is a domestic auto technology institute, found that models with pure electronic hidden handles and a door opening success rate of only 67 post side impact.
That's not good enough.
That's not good enough at all, comparing with 98% of traditional normal door handles.
Yeah.
Have you ever walked to the side of a car and kind of looked at it and thought, how do I get in?
Yeah.
Totally.
Yeah, because it's not obvious.
So imagine that scenario when first responders are trying to get you out.
That second or two or three or 30 seconds, or however long it takes them to figure out how to get you out of there, could make the difference between life and death.
The zero gravity seats that you mentioned, I mean, I get the design.
You know what they look like to me?
They look like a dentist chair.
Yeah.
Right?
When you go to the dentist it's kind of curved and your feet kind of.
You don't go all the way flat sometimes.
That's not a pleasant view, by the way.
Well, yeah, I guess if you're associating it with... That's all car seats when you recline them.
Well, not really, because the bottom will come out a little bit.
And it'll support your calves.
How do people drive like that?
Well, you don't.
You don't.
And that's the point.
But the complaint about those zero-gravity seats is that if you are in the passenger seat and your car doesn't have that safety feature that you mentioned Yushin, about it needing to be in park, then the seatbelt might not do its job in protecting you.
So that's why a lot of those newer cars will have the park designation in order to operate the seat.
And I guess, like many other new designs that we notice nowadays, such as the irregular shaped steering wheels, some come with very interesting shapes.
Instead of being round,
So all of these designs, including the zero gravity seats they currently don't really have the kind of collision tests that can prove that they're completely safe once these designs become reality in the cars that we're driving day by day, or that we're riding day by day?
So I guess that's one controversy that some of these NUV designs are attracting these days.
Yeah.
Those door handles, too.
Did you mention this already?
The current standards, they don't mandate that car doors must unlock after a collision.
And that's a big deal because it means manufacturers cannot be held liable if the doors remain unlocked. true that is a really important point so what why now I mean why is this important that we're having this discussion or that they the powers that be are having this discussion now what kind of impact is safety concerns causing around the world I think in recent years there has been some kind of a trend a change in like the design or the concept of design in when these car manufacturers are trying to design car but I'm not saying which one is wrong because this is a kind of survival strategy for a lot of these car companies because today's high competitive car manufacturing market some car makers they focus on promoting driving performance or safety let's say stability that kind of thing catering more to drivers and others may emphasize in-car entertainment systems let's say they they have a lot of projectors yes they have yeah screens and refrigerators even and some smart ai systems aiming to serve passengers these i think they are two different paths when they're trying to design cars but which approach is right because people can simply just choose according to their own needs right but when we are like maybe like Several years ago or decades ago, people designed cars mainly, I think, for car drivers to create that kind of safe space and know that kind of different fancy features.
Yeah, it's tough.
You were telling me before the show.
You were telling us at least one new EV model has drones that can land and take off from the roof of the vehicle.
Yes.
I mean, that's amazing.
That's kind of cool.
That has nothing to do with the safety of the vehicle.
And then some other designs that are designed for safety purposes.
Many are questioning those as well.
The side mirrors of the vehicle being replaced by cameras with the screen inside.
There are some issues with that.
Well, number one, they're designed to give you a wider field of view to eliminate the blind spot.
You know, the blind spot, you have to look over your shoulder to get a full view.
It's meant to eliminate that.
But, As we were chatting before the show, Yuxin, you brought up a great point.
What if the power goes out?
Yeah.
If they lose power, you suddenly lose all your side view.
What if it's raining or dirt or snow or something covers that camera lens?
What do you do in that particular instance?
So it's tough.
They had in October, actually, they had the 2025 World NCAP Conference.
It was held in Shanghai.
And that's where global leaders got together with experts in the automobile field to discuss all of these key issues.
So it definitely is. on the radar for sure.
What about regulatory bodies?
Pardon me speaking of you know, people getting together to make decisions.
What are safety organizations doing to deal with these risks that we've talked about?
Yeah, one thing that I noticed which is a good news to address the safety risk brought by electronic door handles, is that on September 24th, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, they released a draft for a comment document that's titled Safety Tech technical requirements for automobile door handles for public consultation, which means that everybody we can give comments and say if we agree with the to-be-implemented new policy on erasing an invisible door handle in the future perhaps.
Yeah, they're asking for public feedback.
Yeah, do you like it?
Do you hate it?
Do you agree with the new policy?
Which, once implemented this new standard, will require that exterior doors door handles.
They must provide sufficient space for manual operation under all conditions, including when powers are shut off.
And also, even if the doors are locked after a crash or an accident, rescuers should still be able to open them from the outside to ensure a safe amount of time for just cracking the door open and dragging people out.
So that's something really important when an emergency happens.
And apart from that, some Chinese automakers.
They also realize the potential risks going on with the electronic door handles.
So they are trying to develop their own door handles that remain easy to operate even in extreme conditions such as just the freezing weather.
We talked about how in northeastern China it can be hard, due to low temperature in winter times, for EVs to run and operate.
That could be the hope in solving that issue, I think.
And China has been upgrading its regulatory and standards framework, introducing 10 mandatory regulations and seven of which were issued in 2024 and 2025 alone.
Are explained by a.
I mean as explained by Lv Hengxu, Deputy Director of the China Automotive Standardization Research Institute.
Yet, with the rise of smart electric vehicles, China's road safety landscape is facing that kind of complex challenges and the industry still lacks safety comprehensive evaluation framework when people are working on it, since traditional safety assessment standards designed for conventional cars are no longer sufficient for today's intelligent vehicles.
Yeah, and it's changing, and the ev market is probably the fastest changing, you know, in all of the the car markets.
So it's it's a big deal that you have to keep up with what's going on.
We talked about CIIE on the show, the China International Import Expo.
It wrapped up recently.
And automobile manufacturers.
They were there demonstrating their latest advancements in passive and active safety technologies.
What are some of the things that they were talking about or put on display?
Yeah.
If you throw me in that automobile exhibition hall this year, I might be able to bring back something interesting comparing with how I presented it last year.
But yeah, good point.
Both active and passive safety technologies.
So by passive safety technologies I mean Those that are gears inside the car, like airbags or seatbelt, that mitigate the consequences of an accident during and after impact, as from the moment that first contact is made.
And in the era of smart EVs, I think passive safety is important, now featuring enhanced structural rigidity and also specifically protecting the battery pack.
So for example, there's a Honda ACE structure that's showcasing via this year's CIE.
So they exhibited its ACE, which is Advanced Compatibility Engineering body structure, which aims to protect the vehicle's occupants, that's the passengers inside, while simultaneously reducing the impact force on the opposing vehicle.
So this structure?
It's a combination of hardened metal resources 68 of high-strength steel and 25 of aerospace-grade hot-formed steel.
See, it's really hard for me to read it, because it sounds pretty safe by the fact that they're using aerospace materials.
Yeah, there's another company that's doing that as well, Toyota.
They're using high-strength steel as well, where it accounts for up to 72 of the structure of one of their models.
And another thing that they're trying to do is to reduce the risk of the battery being crushed in a collision.
There's a company that is kind of putting a protective case around the battery so that it doesn't have any risk of being crushed.
And that'll be safer for everyone involved as well.
And also fire prevention.
I think that's important for NEV especially.
So having a high rigidity that's impact resistant body is important.
But it not only prevents the battery cells from being deformed in a crash, but also helps lower the risk of a fire afterwards.
So that's important too.
That's why you put that casing around the battery to help it, to help protect it from that type of thing from happening.
Yeah, i mean cool stuff in a car, um having shrimp in your frunk or drones on your roof.
Yeah, i mean that's pretty awesome.
A raised live fish, or i don't get that one.
Did you just leave them in there?
Maybe it doesn't seem safe at all for the fish?
Um Yeah, all these things are cool, but safety has to be a priority.
The hard part for EV makers, how do you sell safety?
How do you make that your selling point to customers when you're showcasing all this really cool innovative tech inside the vehicle?
It's a tough balance.
It's a tightrope that they're walking, and hopefully they'll become experts at doing just that.
