Changan Automobile says it has been granted Level 3 (L3) autonomous driving product access approval as part of China’s ‘first batch’, allowing one of its passenger vehicles to operate single-lane automated driving on specified highway and urban expressway sections in southwest China’s Chongqing.
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Changan says the approval follows extensive system-level validation of Changan’s L3 autonomous driving capabilities, supported by more than five 5 million kilometres of real-world road testing.
Testing, the company maintains, covered a broad range of driving scenarios, spanning 185 categories—49 percent beyond regulatory benchmarks—with extreme conditions accounting for 36 percent of total testing. On average, one complex risk scenario was encountered every 38.9 kilometres, ‘demonstrating the system’s ability to operate safely and adaptively within its ODC (operational design conditions)’.
Last week, China’s government confirmed that two OEMs’ have had L3 models approved for production: Changan Automobile’s Deepal SL03 and BAIC Arcfox’s Alpha S. The models are said to be capable of driving autonomously on congested urban roads at a maximum speed of up to 50 km/h and on expressways autonomously at up to 80 km/h.
The approval by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is intended to help transition L3 autonomous driving technologies from the current testing stages to pilot road use on designated roads, in Chongqing and in Beijing, before wider public use is allowed.
So far, the Chinese government has only allowed vehicles on public roads with up to L2 or L2+ self-driving capabilities, which require drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times. L3 autonomous technology allows for hands-off driving, in conditions such as on highways and in congested urban roads, but drivers are still required to remain fully alert in case they need to intervene.
See also: China approves first Level 3 autonomous driving vehicles
