National standards for smart cars will be released in a centralized manner. What challenges are they facing?

As intelligent driving is being implemented at an accelerated pace, the management framework must keep up.

At the recent TEDA Automotive Forum, major automakers and suppliers in the industry gave a timetable for the large-scale implementation of advanced intelligent driving: 2025.

For example, Horizon Robotics said that by 2025, intelligent driving system products are expected to cross the early adopter gap of 13.5% penetration rate and gradually grow to 34% penetration rate for early mainstream users.

Car companies such as Changan and GAC Aion also have similar statements.

However, as this time point approaches, many supporting foundations hidden behind the data should also be put on the agenda, such as the establishment of a national standard system for intelligent connected vehicles.

It concerns the management of smart cars, the rights and interests of users, and even the international voice of enterprises and the entire industry.

At the recent 20th China Automotive Industry Development (TEDA) International Forum, Sun Hang, deputy chief engineer of the China Automotive Standardization Institute of China Automotive Technology and Research Center Co., Ltd., gave a comprehensive explanation of this issue.

Sun Hang gave a speech at the TEDA Forum

He said that the domestic intelligent connected vehicle industry standard system has currently released 56 industry standards, submitted 12 for approval, established 17 projects, and applied for 25 projects, including basic terminology specifications, classification and grading (the previously announced autonomous driving classification standard is one of them), as well as data, products, etc.

Most of the releases of these standard systems are concentrated in 2024 and 2025.

This is basically consistent with the pace of large-scale implementation of intelligent connected vehicles in China. In fact, at this TEDA Forum, executives of many automobile companies believed that the large-scale market outbreak of intelligent driving and L3 autonomous driving will occur in 2025.

Based on this market judgment, industry management must follow, and intelligent connected industry standards are the basis for management.

01 What is the progress of the industry standards for intelligent connected vehicles?

Sun Hang introduced that the current construction of the intelligent connected vehicle standard system follows the "Guidelines for the Construction of the National Internet of Vehicles Industry Standard System (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) 2023 Edition" to be released in 2023 (the document was first released at the end of 2017 and then re-released in 2023).

Built according to the standards of the construction guide

It is understood that the "Guidelines for the Construction of the National Internet of Vehicles Industry Standard System (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) 2023 Edition" requires the approval and release of 56 standards, the drafting of 39 projects, the research of 31 standardization needs and more than 40 standard experiments.

The latest progress is that 56 intelligent connected vehicle standards have been released in the system, 12 have been submitted for approval, 17 have been established, and 25 have been reported for establishment.

In general, as of now, there are 110 national industry standards for intelligent connected vehicles that have entered the standardization process. The goal is to complete more than 100 of them by 2025, and 140 by 2030.

Among these, some of the more important industry standards, including three mandatory standards such as vehicle information security technical requirements, general technical requirements for vehicle software upgrades, and autonomous driving data travel recording systems, have been released recently.

These are also the first three mandatory national standards in the field of intelligent connected vehicles.

Key Standards Development Plan

In addition, five mandatory national standards are also being formulated, including automobile password applications, emergency braking technical requirements, etc., and the release time is mainly concentrated in the second half of this year to 2026.

In addition, the China Automotive Technology and Research Center is also promoting the release of the "National Automotive Chip Standard System", which also has more than 70 chip-related standards.

Sun Hang said that the national industry standards for intelligent connected vehicles, plus the construction of the underlying automotive electronics standards system for intelligent connected vehicles, currently have a total of more than 300 national industry standards planned.

It is foreseeable that these standards will be launched intensively in the following period of time.

In addition to these developments and plans, Sun Hang introduced that in the process of building the standard system for intelligent connected vehicles, several key directions are considered:

The first is to promote the basic universal standards as the basis. This includes the attribution and definition of intelligent connected vehicles, classification and symbol coding, etc. The more representative one here is the previously released classification standards for autonomous driving from L0 to L5.

Security Dimensions of Intelligent Connected Vehicles

The second is the high concern for the safety of intelligent connected cars. The safety here is not just the passive safety and active safety of traditional cars. For intelligent connected cars, concepts in other fields such as functional safety, information security, and data security are also introduced as key points.

The several mandatory standards we mentioned above are a reflection of this concern.

Finally, there are corresponding standard-setting plans for different technical routes, such as networked communications and satellite communications related to vehicle-road collaboration.

Moreover, the scope of this standard system is still expanding. Some hot concepts in the industry, such as smart cockpits, artificial intelligence, chips, etc., are promoted by corresponding standards.

02 New standards, new challenges

The reconstruction of the traditional automotive industry by intelligent connected vehicles is not only in terms of explicit aspects such as technology and users, but also in terms of automotive industry standards, which extend from technology, demand, etc. to the underlying management areas, thus forming a test for standard setters.

The challenges are multi-faceted. Sun Hang said that one of them is the complex electronic system of intelligent connected vehicles, and whether the basic standards can support the high-level development of the industry.

Challenges Brought by Automotive Electronics

From the perspective of technical standard formulation, intelligent connected vehicles are supported by automotive electronics standardization work.

To put it simply, with the improvement of automobile electrification and intelligence, automotive electronics and electrical systems have undergone tremendous changes. One trend is the centralization of E/E architecture; another trend is the integration and use of electronic components (such as chips).

This requires standard setters to pay attention to electronic function redundancy, failure management, and a series of safety issues that arise from this.

In fact, according to our understanding, from the perspective of the industry as a whole, the transformation of automotive electronics and electrical systems has only occurred in recent years, and it is difficult to provide complete support for technical standards through a large amount of operating data in a short period of time.

Adaptation issues of traditional technical standards

In addition, there is the question of whether the technical standards of traditional automobiles can meet the rapid development of intelligent networking.

These standards may not be related to the intelligent networking function itself, but the body parts that need to be called up by the intelligent networking function, such as lights, body, chassis, etc., the industry standards involving these parts may conflict with the intelligent networking function.

An example Sun Hang cited is that the traditional lighting standard is "no red in front, no white in the rear" (no red front lights, no white rear lights, mainly for lighting and safety considerations), but some smart connected car functions, such as parking, require the forward lights to be adjusted backwards to illuminate the lane lines in order to meet functional safety considerations.

This is a classic case of new requirements conflicting with old standards.

In this regard, Sun Hang said that there are many traditional standards like this. Through investigations over the past year or so, he has collected about 100 traditional technical standards that need to be adjusted.

Systemic challenges of new standards

The first two challenges are aimed at the standards themselves. The last issue is that with the reconstruction of traditional vehicles by intelligent connected vehicles, the implementation and application of new forms of standards also face systematic reconstruction.

Sun Hang summarized the systematic nature here into five aspects: people, machines, materials, methods, and environment (respectively corresponding to the experimental personnel, equipment and tools, enterprises and products, rules, and environmental conditions in the standard-setting process).

A simple example of this reconstruction and challenge is that in the past, the working mode of experimenters in the standard-setting process was relatively simple. They followed the corresponding technical standards, used the corresponding equipment, and generated corresponding technical reports after getting samples.