Late last month, a Xiaomi SU7 was involved in a fatal accident, killing three passengers on board. The accident happened while the vehicle ostensibly had its driver assistance mode engaged. Following the accident, China has started tightening guidelines for such features. This includes a ban on the use of terms such as “autonomous driving” in marketing materials.
Reports point to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as having rolled out the new guidelines after a meeting on 16 April. One item in the new guideline is the aforementioned clamp down on self-driving claims, with brands being forced to use “L(number) assisted driving” instead.
This would remove just about all ambiguity, as the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Levels of Driving Automation are pretty well defined. If nothing else, these are much clearer as to a car’s capabilities than any vague description like Tesla’s infamous “Autopilot” or “Full Self Driving”. If you’re unfamiliar with the rating, the long and short of it is only Level 4 or above is considered fully autonomous and doesn’t require human intervention.
Unfortunately, this new regulation comes with a couple of casualties, one of which being the complete ban on other autonomous features like automatic remote parking and summoning. This is because these features cannot ensure driver engagement.
Which also brings us to driver monitoring systems which now not allowed be disabled. This, in turn, means that if a car detects that its driver has left their hands of the steering wheel for over 60 seconds, it will automatically pull risk mitigation strategies like turning on the hazard lights as well as slowing down and pulling over.
One good thing to have come out of this for potential customers – but likely the opposite for carmakers – is a ban on public betas. This means no more putting the public at risk by making them not only pay for the purchasing of a car, but also test claims of autonomy for the company. Reports cite the new guidelines as saying that “public testing whether with thousands or tens of thousands of users, must go through official approval channels”.
Which leads to the last restriction being added – a limit to frequent over the air (OTA) updates. Emergency updates will now require that the cars be recalled, as well as needing the approval of the State Administration for Market Regulation. The new regulation is meant to “reduce frequent OTA updates and improve version risk management”. In other words, to make sure updates are actually thoroughly tested before being rolled out.
For now though, it remains to be seen what sort of impact these new regulations will have on vehicles with any level of autonomous driving elsewhere. While Tesla may have previously had the mindshare monopoly on autonomous vehicles, more and more EV brands from China are starting to take over that space.
(Source: CarNewsChina, Gizmodo)
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