On April 8, 2022, the "2022 Automotive Evaluation International Summit and C-NCAP Annual Conference" hosted by China Automotive Technology and Research Center Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Automotive Technology and Research Center) was held through online live broadcast.
With the theme of "Cohesion, Energy Building, and Innovation", the summit invited authoritative figures in the automotive industry to discuss the new situation and new tasks of third-party automobile evaluation.
The Automobile Evaluation and Management Center (hereinafter referred to as "CIC Evaluation") under the China Automobile Center is responsible for operating C-NCAP, CCRT and other evaluation projects, with the mission of leading the progress of the automotive industry and supporting the construction of an automobile power, serving consumers through independent, impartial, professional and open testing and evaluation, being a good car selection and car purchase consultant, promoting automobile quality improvement and new technology application, and helping Chinese auto products to go global.
Regarding the background of the summit and the C-NCAP annual meeting, as well as the development prospects of China's automobile evaluation in the future, Li Xiangrong, deputy director of CHINA AUTOMOBILE Evaluation, accepted an exclusive interview with China Automotive Trend Network.
Question 1: As we all know, China's New Car Evaluation Regulations (C-NCAP) are third-party evaluations. Before the directory of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on the domestic new car, it has passed the relevant national standards, so why do we need third-party evaluation?
Li Xiangrong: As An Tiecheng, party secretary, chairman and general manager of CHINA AUTOMOBILE Center, pointed out, in order to achieve a safer, greener and more pleasant travel experience, Chinese consumers have put forward higher expectations for automobiles, and also put forward new requirements for automobile technology and product quality. In order to meet these high-quality expectations, in order to test the achieved effect, a third-party evaluation of the car is required. Third-party assessment is an important symbol of a mature consumer society. As a bulk durable consumer product, automobiles have the characteristics of high-value and low-frequency purchases, and their product performance directly affects the safety, health and long-term experience of consumers.
Question 2: Since August 2006, C-NCAP of China Automobile Center has gone through 16 years, what role has C-NCAP played in promoting automobile safety in China?
Li Xiangrong: In August 2006, the China Automobile Center completed the crash test of the first model of C-NCAP, and China became the sixth country to establish an NCAP system. C-NCAP has undergone 5 upgrades and more than 1,500 crash tests for more than 500 hot-selling models, involving more than 90 corporate products.
At present, C-NCAP has become the industry yardstick for safety technology research and development, as well as an authoritative reference for consumers to buy cars. The successful operation of C-NCAP has promoted the continuous improvement of China's automotive safety technology to the international advanced level, and the company's product safety concept and user safety experience have also been continuously improved. In particular, the safety level of self-owned brand cars has been greatly improved. At present, China's automotive safety performance level has ranked among the forefront of the world, and the gap between independent brands and joint venture brands has been greatly reduced.
The C-NCAP protocol has been in operation for 16 years and was officially implemented on January 1 this year in version 2021. When C-NCAP was first introduced, in 2006, the five-star ratio was about 30%. Through the continuous advancement of these years, the difficulty of the evaluation procedures has gradually increased, and by the end of the 2018 version of the test, the five-star ratio has reached between 70% and 80%. This ratio is similar to that of Europe, Australia or other NCAP.
Question 3: At the "2022 Automobile Evaluation International Summit and C-NCAP Annual Conference" held on April 8, the "China New Car Safety Evaluation (C-NCAP) Summary Report 2018-2021" was released in the form of the "China Automobile Evaluation Blue Book". Please briefly describe the situation of this Blue Book.
Li Xiangrong: The three-year 2018 edition of the C-NCAP evaluation work has just come to a successful end. Based on the overall evaluation results of the C-NCAP 2018 edition, the Blue Book comprehensively summarizes and analyzes the evaluation results of vehicle safety performance from the three dimensions of occupant protection, pedestrian protection and active safety.
The 2018 edition of C-NCAP has been implemented since July 1, 2018, and by the end of 2021, a total of 102 models have been evaluated and the results have been released. These models include 60 own brands, 41 joint venture brands and one imported model. Among the 102 models, 77 are fuel vehicles and 25 are new energy vehicles.
The 2018 edition is one of the more important editions and has two major features.
The first is to integrate basically with international standards. Previous versions were just crew protection, "three bumps" plus whipping tests. The 2018 edition includes occupant protection, pedestrian protection and active safety, and is in line with the global mainstream NCAP system.
The second is the introduction of new energy vehicles. In the form of crash test, additional tests for electrical safety are carried out, including the performance of electric shock protection, leakage of electrolyte, fire and explosion protection, and verification of the effectiveness of high-pressure automatic disconnect devices. Supplementary testing after the collision of new energy vehicles from four aspects. For new energy vehicles that do not meet the requirements of electric safety, they are not given a star rating, only a comprehensive score rate. Since the implementation of the 2018 version of the regulations, there has been no situation of "not rating the star", and the new energy vehicles evaluated have not had major problems in terms of electrical safety.
Question 4: Among the new models listed in China in 2021, there are more than 300 intelligent and connected vehicles, and new energy vehicles and automatic driving are becoming the future development direction. As a third-party industry authority, how does CHINA AUTOMOBILE Center respond to this change?
Li Xiangrong: In order to further strengthen the role of THE CHINACC in promoting the industry in terms of evaluation, CHINA AUTOMOBILE Evaluation was officially established in March 2020. After its establishment, the construction of the two brands of C-NCAP and CCRT was strengthened.
In the era of great changes in the global automotive industry, automotive evaluation work is also facing new development opportunities:
First, under the background of "carbon peaking", new energy vehicles have grown rapidly, and micro-electric vehicles have also developed rapidly under new opportunities and market conditions. At the same time, the winter endurance and crash safety performance of new energy vehicles are of great concern to the public.
Second, under the general trend of automobile intelligence and networking, the functional safety, human-computer interaction, data security and other issues brought by intelligent networking and automatic driving are also new challenges. In response to the corresponding domestic and international "double cycle" trend, CHINA AUTOMOBILE Evaluation has increased its attention and research efforts in terms of the adaptability of high-quality technical standards.
In this context, China Automobile Evaluation focuses on several aspects:
The 2021 version of the C-NCAP and CCRT regulations, which was officially implemented on January 1 this year, has increased the "difficulty" accordingly. In addition to increasing the side column collision conditions for new energy vehicles, C-NCAP has strengthened the assessment of body structure, especially for the safety of battery packs. CCRT has also been updated and improved in assisted driving.
At this summit, we issued the "Special Evaluation Regulations for Micro Electric Vehicles". Special evaluation is made from the three aspects of collision safety, use safety, and endurance charging, and actively responds to consumer concerns.
On the intelligent track, CCRT pays attention to the rapid development of assisted driving technology, focuses on the frontier issues of intelligent development, establishes a new assisted driving evaluation procedure, and helps the continuous optimization of automation technology.
In addition, we are about to complete the research and verification of the evaluation procedures of the world's leading L3 level autonomous driving, further promoting the automation development of China's automobiles.
Question 5: The proportion of domestic new energy vehicles is increasing, and consumers are very concerned about the safety of new energy vehicles. The 2021 version of the C-NCAP regulations, which began to be implemented this year, is there anything new about new energy vehicles?
Li Xiangrong: With the increase in the number and models of new energy vehicles, the proportion of new energy vehicle evaluation is gradually increasing, accounting for 32% in 2021.
The big change in the 2021 version of the regulations is that the new energy vehicle has added a side column crash test to restore the accident situation such as vehicle collision with trees and power poles. The side column collision has higher requirements for the body structure, B-pillar strength, lower beam strength, and body strength, and at the same time, the strength of the battery pack structure is also a greater test.
In the future, CHINA AUTOMOBILE Evaluation will select more new energy models for evaluation. In addition to C-NCAP, CHINA AUTOC Also launched the CCRT (China Automotive Consumer Research and Evaluation Procedures). Since 2018, ccrt has undergone two revision changes, completing the evaluation of 104 models. At the same time, CCRT conducted more than 40,000 consumer surveys and transformed the tests of new energy, energy conservation and environmental protection into more than ten corresponding national standards and group standards.
CCRT and C-NCAP are complementary, C-NCAP focuses on automotive safety, and CCRT covers performance such as in-car health and tram endurance that consumers are more concerned about.
At the 2022 Summit, we also released the C-NCAP Roadmap, covering the period from 2022 to 2028. In the new energy sector, the future will be added to the test of the battery pack, also known as scraping the bottom condition. After the vehicle is underpinned, especially the new energy vehicle, it is often not an immediate problem, and after a period of time, it may catch fire or bring other dangers. At the same time, active safety-related technologies will be more and more applied, whether it is new energy vehicles or fuel vehicles, we will further enrich the test scenarios.
In the longer term, the roadmap also takes into account some research on the safety of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and the China Automobile Center has established a new new energy center and is making preparations in various aspects.
Question 6: In the past ten years, CHINA AUTOMOBILE Center has invested considerable funds every year to support the operation of C-NCAP. After the establishment of China Automobile Evaluation in March 2020, the voluntary application of enterprises was cancelled, and all the evaluation models were bought out of their own pockets. What is the reason why CHINA AUTOMOBILE CENTER has been insisting on conducting automotive safety tests?
Li Xiangrong: As Mr. An has always stressed, we must stick to C-NCAP.
First of all, we want to lead the progress of safety technology and quality with procedures. Both C-NCAP and CCRT have been widely recognized by the industry. Under the leadership of C-NCAP regulations, the design level of current vehicles and the level of technical application have been significantly improved. Especially for Chinese independent brands, the overall average comprehensive score rate of their models is only slightly lower than that of joint venture brands. The improvement of quality has also improved the export competitiveness of independent brand vehicles.
Secondly, the China Automobile Center has been gradual in setting evaluation standards, not to increase the difficulty at once. We believe that the evaluation standards should be in line with China's national conditions and should also take into account the current state of technology. From an international perspective, the 2018 edition of the C-NCAP standard has kept up with the international level. Some projects in the 2021 edition will be more difficult than foreign NCAP.
Third, C-NCAP has a strong public welfare attribute. In the process of application of procedures, we adhere to the "four unifications", that is, unified car selection, unified car purchase, unified evaluation, unified release, to ensure our public welfare authority attributes. At the same time, we have worked with many safety organizations around the world, including Global NCAP's "United Nations Decade of Road Safety Action", etc., to do a lot of public welfare things together, so that more people pay attention to vehicle safety and travel safety.
Question 7: For third-party evaluation agencies, authority is crucial, how can CHINAC Strengthen Authority? How to fully reflect the public welfare in the evaluation process?
Li Xiangrong: The basis for the authority of the evaluation is to deeply study the Chinese scene and establish a test project that conforms to the characteristics of China's traffic laws, so as to realize the sinicization of the test scale and then promote the corresponding technological development. In the latest roadmap, we will launch the "China Barrier" self-developed equipment and equipment.
Since the 2006 edition, C-NCAP has always emphasized the need to conform to the actual road traffic safety accident situation in China. Five edition changes, each based on the latest research results on traffic accidents, based on actual information to establish the entire procedure, thus won the general recognition of domestic enterprises.
The C-NCAP regulations are synchronized with the international community, or fully integrated, but they are not simply copied. China Automobile Center actively builds a public welfare platform for international technology, and regularly communicates with global public welfare organizations or organizations to promote Chinese brands to go abroad and go to the world. As the only Chinese evaluation agency recognized by the global NCAP, CHINA AUTOMOBILE Center has been maintaining regular communication with NCAP organizations in various countries. With the continuous deepening of research and the continuous development of testing technology, in some aspects, C-NCAP has played a leading role in the 2021 edition of C-NCAP "pedestrian protection" has an "advanced leg type" evaluation, which is the first evaluation index proposed by China. Currently, the latest version of the European NCAP also cites this indicator.
China Automobile Center works closely with the United Nations Road Safety Organization and the World Health Organization to actively carry out road safety science popularization. In terms of protecting the members of the car and the participants of the vulnerable groups in road traffic, a lot of public welfare concept promotion work has also been carried out.
Question 8: China has entered the automobile society, China's automobile industry is also an important industry of the national pillar, in the future, how to continue to play a leading role in the automobile safety of the automobile evaluation work of the China Automobile Center?
Li Xiangrong: First, the original mission of C-NCAP is to provide consumers with more vehicle safety information and improve the level of automobile safety. We will adhere to this original intention, let the people use the car happily, and let the people test new technologies and products with peace of mind. It plays an escort role for the safer, greener and more enjoyable travel pursued by Chinese consumers.
At the second level, the C-NCAP regulations should keep pace with the times, uphold "moderate advancement", and constantly upgrade standards. China Automobile Center adheres to the form of openness and common progress, promotes the research of the entire evaluation, and orderly upgrades the evaluation procedures in the fields of automobile safety, energy conservation and environmental protection. At the same time, according to the specific conditions of China's traffic accidents, a number of evaluation use cases that conform to China's traffic laws and car characteristics are established to realize the sinicization of the evaluation of this "ruler".
In order to strive to realize the people's yearning for a better life, we hope to provide more car purchase help for the people through car evaluation, especially in the intelligent sector, and launch the world's leading L3 level automatic driving special evaluation procedures as soon as possible to promote the technological development of the entire Chinese automotive industry. (End)
(This article was published to China Automotive Trend Network)