China approves first national standard for autonomous driving, Jefferies comments

Investing.com -- China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced Monday that GB 44721-2026, the country's first national standard for L3 and L4 autonomous driving systems, has been approved and will take effect on July 1, 2027.

The standard represents a shift from vehicle-level performance requirements to lifecycle safety assurance. Automakers must now demonstrate safety governance across research and development, manufacturing and post-deployment operation.

The regulation moves responsibility from individual vehicles to the automaker. Manufacturers must establish a full-lifecycle safety-management framework that covers development, manufacturing, deployment and post-deployment operations. Single-vehicle certification will no longer be sufficient.

Simulation, closed-course and on-road testing are now explicitly required under the regulatory framework. This turns validation infrastructure from an engineering choice into a compliance requirement.

The standard sets requirements for system activation, status indication and driver takeover monitoring, particularly for L3 applications. This addresses the gap between marketed capability and real-world use.

Enterprise capability reviews, safety archives and confirmatory testing are implemented as an integrated framework. The focus shifts from whether a system works to whether safety can be continuously demonstrated and verified.

Jefferies said the standard shifts the basis of competition from product capability to organizational capability. Data, safety governance and scale are becoming regulatory advantages. The framework should reinforce the position of leading automakers while raising the compliance burden for smaller electric vehicle companies that remain dependent on suppliers and lack scale.

Leading Tier 1 suppliers may benefit as automakers increasingly require validation, safety case evidence and compliance support rather than standalone hardware or algorithms, Jefferies added.

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