Under the policy year, various new automobile regulations and standards have been continuously introduced.
From the strictest battery safety standards in history, to the supervision of assisted driving systems, to now the new national standard of AEB. All this points to the most concerned car safety issues. At all times, safety is the ultimate bottom line of industrial development.
Image source: Euro NCAP
A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology publicly solicited opinions on six new national standards, including “Technical Requirements and Test Methods for Automatic Emergency Braking Systems for Light Vehicles”. The new national standard upgrades the automatic emergency braking system (AEB) from a recommended standard to a mandatory national standard, replacing the current national standard GB/T 39901-2021, which has ended the consultation at the end of June and is scheduled to be implemented on January 1, 2028.
In terms of time, it has been less than 3 years since the new national standard was finally implemented. This means that starting in 2028, if a new car is not equipped with AEB as standard, it will no longer be eligible for sale.
Of course, there is another question worth pondering, can the controversy over the AEB route get the final answer when the new national standard is implemented?
The strictest AEB national standard in history landed three years later
Advanced Emergency Braking System (AEB) is an active safety technology for automobiles.
Based on perception devices, such as lidar, millimeter-wave radar, or ADAS cameras, it senses the risk of collisions with vehicles, pedestrians, or other traffic participants in front of it, and automatically triggers the actuator to apply braking through the system to avoid collisions or mitigate the degree of collision.
Under the current standard, AEB has not yet become a mandatory standard option. GB/T 39901-2021 “Performance requirements and test methods for automatic emergency braking systems (AEBS) for passenger cars” is a recommended standard and is not mandatory.
The new national standard has made a lot of upgrades in terms of safety, and in addition to requiring vehicles to mandatory the installation of AEB, it also puts forward many new requirements.
First of all, the new national standard has “expanded” the scope of application. According to the requirements of the new national standard, “M1 and N1 vehicles should be equipped with automatic emergency braking systems”, and the new standard also adds recognition ability assessment and simulation test items for vulnerable traffic participants such as pedestrian targets, bicycle targets, and pedal two-wheeled motorcycle targets.
Specifically, M1 refers to passenger vehicles with no more than 9 seats, and common family cars such as cars, SUVs, and MPVs belong to this category; N1 refers to cargo vehicles with a maximum design total mass of no more than 3500kg, such as some operating small trucks and blue brand small and micro trucks, which belong to this type of model.
According to the previous standard, only operating passenger and truck vehicles with a length of more than 11 meters are required to be equipped with AEB in China, and trucks, traction vehicles and dangerous goods transport trucks with a total mass of more than or equal to 12 tons and a maximum speed of more than (including) 90km/h are mandatory to be equipped with AEB.
Now, under the requirements of the new national standard, more than 90% of light vehicles are required to be equipped with AEB as standard. This also shows that AEB cannot be exclusive to certain models, but will be widely popularized, thereby reducing the accident casualty rate.
Image source: Lantu Automobile
The technical indicators have been greatly improved, which is also one of the characteristics of the new national standard. As can be seen in the draft for comments, the new national standard has increased the identification requirements for vulnerable traffic participants, not only requiring the identification of pedestrians and bicycles, but also including small motor vehicles such as two-wheeled motorcycles, and adding tests for complex scenarios such as intersections and right-turn following.
In addition, the new national standard has made new requirements for the upper and lower limits of the speed triggered by AEB, requiring the AEB system of M1 passenger cars to be activated in the speed range of 10km/h-80km/h, and the N1 model in the speed range of 10km/h-60km/h.
For the stationary front car, the speed of the test vehicle (M1) has been increased from 30km/h to 80km/h of the old national standard, and it is required to ensure complete collision avoidance at a speed of 40km/h. The speed per second must be reduced by no less than 5.0 m/s² when braking, compared to 4.0 m/s² in the old standard. For slow vehicles in front (20km/h), the test speed was increased to a maximum of 80km/h. For vehicles braking in front (50km/h), the distance between the two vehicles is 40 meters.
On the whole, the technical standards of the new national standard have been significantly improved, which not only requires faster speed adaptability, but also requires more accurate system response. Safety will also be greatly improved for traffic participants.From another point of view, this puts forward higher requirements for all car companies and even the entire AEB supply chain.
In the AEB route dispute, safety is the only criterion
Through the analysis of the draft for comments, we found that the new national standard does not mandate specific sensor configurations.This also shows that the new national standard does not point to a certain AEB technical route, but provides more possibilities for different technical routes.
While we are still debating the AEB route, who will dominate future technology trends. The arrival of the new national standard seems to give us the answer.
The release of the new national standard comes at a time when the industry is also experiencing a fierce debate on AEB’s technical route. From the perspective of the entire industry, AEB’s technology route currently has three solutions: millimeter-wave radar, pure vision and multi-sensor fusion.
We compare the three routes horizontally and find that each has its own characteristics. Millimeter-wave radar AEB solution is generally based on 77GHz millimeter-wave radar, in contrast, millimeter-wave radar AEB solution is a more basic technical solution in the industry, the advantage is low cost, wide application, disadvantage is susceptibility to environmental interference, failure rate is more obvious.
The pure vision AEB solution relies on the camera for perception, which has the disadvantage of being limited in the recognition of stationary objects and is also susceptible to environmental interference such as light.
The strongest solution is the multi-sensor AEB fusion solution, which uses millimeter-wave radar, lidar and camera fusion in perception. From a safety perspective, the multi-sensor fusion solution has more safety in theory. Of courseThe shortcoming of this plan is that the cost is too high.
Another important analysis point is that we cannot abandon algorithms, computing power and other factors to compare the levels of the three routes, that is to say, we cannot subjectively believe that the multi-fusion sensor solution is better than other technical routes based on the number of sensors.
The new national standard also takes into account the characteristics of different technical routes, so it does not specify which type of sensor must be equipped as standard in the draft for comments, which is intended to leave more room for development for different technical routes.
Although some car companies have achieved the popularization of AEB, whether AEB can be played stably is quite different from the technical route, perception scheme, perception hardware, algorithm structure, etc. it adopts.
For car companies and AEB supply chain companies, after selecting a certain technical route, it is necessary to continuously optimize in terms of safety in order to meet the requirements of the new national standard, while maintaining software and hardware upgrades and iterations to ensure the safety of users.
In addition, exaggerated propaganda should be prohibited. When promoting assisted driving functions, enterprises cannot mislead consumers. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also clearly required in the recent announcement that “system functional boundaries and security response measures are prohibited from exaggeration and false publicity”.
All in all, for the new national standard, no matter what technical route is adopted, safety is the only standard.
Safety equality is the ultimate secret of the new national standard
Protecting vulnerable traffic groups more extensively, maintaining road traffic safety more comprehensively, and promoting the development of the automobile safety industry more rigorously are the ultimate goals of the new national standard.
The last time regulations on AEB were introduced were around 2017. At that time, in order to further reduce the collision probability of operating passenger and cargo vehicles, all new road and tourist bus models with a length of > 11m after 2021 were required to be equipped with AEB; In addition, trucks, tractors, and dangerous goods trucks with a total weight ≥ 12,000 kg and a maximum speed ≥ 90 km/h are also required to be equipped with AEB.
Now, the coverage of the new national standard will be expanded again, which shows the determination of policymakers to improve road safety.
Image source: Euro NCAP
The improvement effect of standard AEB on road safety is also very obvious. Comparing the situation in the United States horizontally, we can perceive one or two. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),forecastIf the United States fully mandates the installation of AEB, it can reduce 24,000 injuries caused by traffic injuries and avoid 362 fatal accidents every year.
Let’s look at the basic situation of our country. According to the data, in 2024, the number of motor vehicles in China will reach 453 million, including 353 million cars, and the number of motor vehicle drivers will reach 542 million, including 506 million car drivers. Coupled with the high average mileage of cars in our country, the concentration of population and the complex road conditions, if AEB is popularized, it will save hundreds of thousands of families.
According to data from the National Passenger Car Association, from January to April 2025, the overall AEB loading rate of our country’s passenger cars will reach 60.1%.New energyThe AEB loading rate of the passenger car market has reached 64.3%. Advances in technical solutions and the use of multiple sensors have led to the continuous improvement of AEB’s functional limits.
However, we found that the assembly rate of models at different price points varies significantly: for models above 400,000 yuan, the AEB assembly rate reaches 100%; 15-400,000 yuan models, AEB assembly rate of more than 80%; 10-150,000 yuan models, AEB assembly rate is about 58.5%; For models below 100,000 yuan, the AEB assembly rate is only 6.5%.
This also shows thatThe loading rate of AEB is highly correlated with model positioning.The higher the price, the higher the AEB assembly rate. For models that focus on cost-effectiveness, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the AEB assembly rate.
By the time the new AEB national standard lands in 2028, almost all models will be equipped with AEB as standard, and AEB solutions with different technical routes may play their role in models in different price ranges.This may also be the reason why the new national standard does not limit a certain AEB technical route, under the premise of meeting safety requirements, different AEB solutions can play a corresponding role in models in different price ranges.
All in all, no matter what route prevails in the future, safety is the only criterion. Let the vast majority of vehicles be equipped with AEB as standard to achieve safety equality, which is the future we most want to see when the new national standard is implemented.