PUBLISHER: ResearchInChina | PRODUCT CODE: 1979940
PUBLISHER: ResearchInChina | PRODUCT CODE: 1979940
Multiple Mandatory Standards for Intelligent Vehicles in China Upgrade Functional Safety Requirements from Recommended to Mandatory Access Criteria
In 2026, China has intensively issued and promoted a number of mandatory national standards for intelligent vehicles, comprehensively strengthening the requirements for Functional Safety (FuSa) and Safety of The Intended Functionality (SOTIF), and setting a clear safety baseline for intelligent vehicles.
For example, in September 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the draft for comments on Safety Requirements for Combined Driving Assistance Systems of Intelligent Connected Vehicles, China's first mandatory national standard for L2 driving assistance systems. It specifies that the functional safety and SOTIF requirements for combined driving assistance systems shall comply with the applicable requirements of GB/T 34590 (all parts) and GB/T 43267, and elaborates on such requirements through Appendix C and Appendix D. In accordance with the standard, the combined driving assistance regulations have upgraded functional safety requirements from recommended standards to mandatory access criteria for the first time. Mainstream automakers have generally made ISO 26262 functional safety certification a standard configuration in the development of L2, L2+ and higher-level products to meet current regulatory requirements and future compliance expectations.
Functional Safety and SOTIF Design Strategies for L3 Autonomous Driving Systems
In February 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the draft for comments on Safety Requirements for Autonomous Driving Systems of Intelligent Connected Vehicles, which will replace GB/T 44721-2024 General Technical Requirements for Autonomous Driving Systems of Intelligent Connected Vehicles to become the first mandatory national standard for L3 and L4 autonomous driving systems. The standard specifies the technical requirements, assurance requirements and type approval criteria for autonomous driving systems of intelligent connected vehicles, and describes the corresponding inspection methods for assurance requirements, safety file inspection and confirmation tests, as well as clearly defining the functional safety goals for hazards related to L3/L4 autonomous driving systems.
In December 2025, China's first batch of L3 conditionally intelligent driving models officially obtained access approval. The ARCFOX Alpha S6 (L3 version) and Changan Deepal SL03 launched road tests in designated areas of Beijing and Chongqing respectively, marking the official implementation of L3 conditionally intelligent driving in China's passenger car market.
Relying on the "Tianshu Intelligent" technology system, Changan Automobile has established a seven-fold redundancy architecture covering braking, steering, power supply, communication, perception, control and interaction based on the ASIL D management and development process in terms of the whole-process guarantee for functional safety and SOTIF of L3 autonomous driving models, with the system safety level reaching the highest ASIL D. In terms of perception, a five-fold perception fusion matrix including high-resolution 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar, vision and ultrasonic sensors is adopted. In the actual test on the inner ring expressway of Chongqing, the recognition distance for stationary obstacles reaches 200 meters, an increase of 40% compared with the L2 system. More crucially, when any sensor fails, the system can activate a backup plan within 0.3 seconds, a response speed six times faster than that of human drivers.
In terms of human-machine interaction safety, a driver takeover early warning mechanism is set up: considering the characteristic that drivers are prone to fatigue under congested working conditions, a progressive early warning strategy is adopted, which is gradually upgraded from mild prompts to strong alarms.
In addition to Changan and BAIC, automakers such as Li Auto, BYD, XPeng, Xiaomi and VOYAH are also actively carrying out road tests of L3 conditionally intelligent driving models and promoting the road test process of their L3 models.
In April 2025, for L3 intelligent driving, Dongfeng VOYAH released Tianyuan Intelligent Architecture, the first L3 intelligent architecture, which integrates two core intelligent technology clusters: the Qingyun L3 intelligent safe driving platform and the Kunpeng L3 high-level intelligent safe driving system. In terms of functional safety design, the architecture meets the requirements of ASIL-D, the highest level of automotive functional safety, and realizes a full-link backup design at the hardware level. Key executive components from sensors, communication channels to computing chips and steer-by-wire chassis all adopt a dual backup design to ensure that the vehicle can maintain basic safe driving capability in the event of a single system failure. In terms of systematic active intelligent safety, the Kunpeng L3 intelligent driving achieves a leap from passive safety to active safety through global integrated intelligent reasoning and autonomous learning.
In addition, in terms of human-machine safety design, a three-level progressive early warning mechanism is created: when the system encounters special circumstances and requires manual takeover, the vehicle will issue a three-level progressive early warning through in-vehicle light flashing, voice and seat vibration. If no one takes over for a long time, the vehicle will automatically park safely; in complex traffic environments with many people, the vehicle will remind people outside the vehicle to pay attention to safety through an external speaker and lights.
Functional Safety Design Strategy for Steer-by-Wire (SBW) Systems
China's new mandatory national standard Basic Requirements for Vehicle Steering Systems will be implemented on July 1, 2026, fully replacing the current GB17675-2021 standard. To address new special technologies such as steer-by-wire (SBW) and Electric Power Steering (EPS), the new standard deletes the mandatory requirements for relevant mechanical connections, shifting the focus from mechanical structure to functional safety. For the functional safety of SBW systems, the new standard emphasizes the following:
Mandatorily require the steering electronic control system to comply with international functional safety standards such as GB/T34590 (all parts) (ISO 26262) and reach the corresponding ASIL level (usually a high level such as D).
Strengthen redundancy capability: clearly require the steering system to have redundancy backup capability after failure to ensure the vehicle can enter a safe state.
Refine failure response: for the full power steering system, detail the safety strategies, degradation processes and alarm mechanisms under various failure scenarios such as power source failure, control signal transmission failure and insufficient energy storage.
The core focus of achieving functional safety compliance for SBW systems is to ensure that the system can still maintain controllable steering function or safe parking in the event of any single or even multiple reasonably foreseeable faults through heterogeneous, fully redundant hardware and software design, coupled with millisecond-level fault diagnosis and processing mechanisms, and extremely stringent fault injection and redundancy switch verification under the framework of the mandatory ASIL D level. As one of the hot technologies for the development of future intelligent vehicles, major suppliers and automakers are actively deploying compliant SBW system products.
The steering system in ZF's Intelligent Chassis 2.0 completely cancels the steering column, and realizes the full electrical signal transmission of steering commands through the coordinated operation of the steering wheel actuator, redundant front axle steering actuator and self-developed vehicle motion control software cubiX. In terms of safety, the fully redundant design meets the ASIL D safety standard, and with the space advantage brought by the canceled universal joint intermediate shaft, it can effectively reduce the risk of leg injury in the event of a collision. At the same time, the system contains two sets of heterogeneous software and hardware as redundancy. When one set of the system fails accidentally, the other set automatically connects seamlessly, and the vehicle can still achieve complete steering function.
The intelligent chassis pre-research technology released by Xiaomi Auto features a Xiaomi 48V SBW system with no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels. The steering ratio can be steplessly adjusted between 5:1 and 15:1, balancing the flexibility of low-speed turning and the stability of high-speed lane changing, and enabling a steering-wheel-free cockpit layout. It uses a "wire" connection to realize human-machine decoupling and natively supports fully autonomous driving, with its design meeting the industry's highest functional safety level standard of ASIL D.
Exploration of AI Functional Safety and SOTIF Solutions Empowered by Automotive AI Safety Standards
With the wide application of AI large models and AI Agents in the automotive field and the gradual popularization of functions such as autonomous driving and intelligent cockpits, the safety of automotive AI systems has become a key focus. Problems such as the unexplainability of AI systems, data dependence and potential systematic failures have prompted the urgent need to address the safety of AI systems applied in automobiles.
In January 2025, ISO launched ISO/PAS 8800:2024, a unified safety standard for AI systems, aiming to regulate the application of AI technology in the automotive field, ensure its safety, reliability and compatibility, and jointly promote the development of AI system safety with ISO 26262 automotive functional safety, ISO 21448 and information security.
In 2025, based on in-depth interpretation of standards and engineering practice, HiRain Technologies built a 3-in-1 AI safety solution of "safety process, safety framework and safety platform", providing a full-chain technical support for the safe development of intelligent vehicles. In response to the characteristics of AI electrical architecture such as application-driven, hierarchical decoupling, safety integration and innovative expansion, HiRain Technologies proposed a unified safety framework definition solution, abstracting the software functional safety implementation of AI systems into four key technologies: secure communication, secure isolation, secure monitoring and secure actuation. Through platform-based functional safety middleware and security component technologies, the implementation difficulty is significantly reduced.
In August 2025, to address challenges such as the AI model safety of highly autonomous driving (L3-L5) systems, exida Shanghai, together with Swsvac, proposed an innovative Distributed Weight Twin (DWT) technology solution to solve the problem of AI redundancy development for autonomous driving. The DWT technology can crop a single E2E model into "twin models" operating in coordination, realize safety redundancy through core technologies such as Weight Mirroring Replication (WMR) asymmetric hardware deployment and neural bridging technology, and achieve 40% cost reduction and 99.99%+ fault coverage through DWT.