With the continuous advancement of automotive technology, the proportion of intelligent and connected vehicles in the automotive market is increasing year by year. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, the number of connected cars in the world will be close to 74 million in 2025, of which the number of connected cars in China will reach 28 million, and China will become the world's largest smart car market. Behind the huge market, security problems such as automotive software and hardware, networks and so on are becoming increasingly prominent, which has become a key factor restricting the development of intelligent and connected vehicles.
Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments jointly issued the "Notice on the Trial Implementation of the Automotive Safety Sandbox Supervision System", which will take the lead in introducing the regulatory sandbox applied to the financial industry into the automotive industry, and make up for the lack of supervision caused by the lag in relevant standards as much as possible by intervening in supervision in advance, which on the surface is a win-win measure for auto companies and consumers.
Why the automotive industry is introducing sandbox regulation
Traceability sandbox (Sandbox) was originally a computer term, and then developed into a regulatory sandbox (Regulatory Sandbox) is widely used in finance, automotive, energy and other fields, through the implementation of supervision in a controllable environment, so that new products in the real market environment iterative verification, and timely eliminate the problem of new product "function".
As the world's largest single new energy vehicle market and intelligent car market, the iterative upgrading speed of mainland automotive intelligent network technology is significantly faster, and the contradictory fact is that the current relevant safety standards are difficult to ensure timely updates, resulting in a large number of "problem" models flowing into the market, and there are serious safety and quality hidden dangers in automotive products. Sandbox supervision is a flexible regulatory system for technological innovation, encouraging automotive companies to continuously carry out risk testing throughout the life cycle of products, and consumers can contact new products and new technologies in advance with relatively low risk.
Automotive intelligent networking technology has become a hotbed of risk
The OTA problem bears the brunt
Although the rapid iterative upgrading of automotive intelligent network technology can bring many conveniences to automobile companies and consumers, it also hides huge risks. On the one hand, the architecture of intelligent network technology "end-network-cloud" itself has network risks, because the network connection system plays an important role in vehicle auxiliary control, once the vehicle encounters network intrusion, the risk of malicious control is extremely large; on the other hand, the wide application of OTA (aerial download technology) can indeed optimize vehicle performance through continuous upgrading, but at the same time it will also make the vehicle safety state become unstable, and the car is identified as safe when it is put on the market. It may become unstable and unsafe because of software upgrades to adjust code or parameters; finally, in big data application scenarios, the use environment of automobile data is more open, and the increase in data flow may lead to personal privacy, trade secret leakage, and even exposure of highways, geography and other information in key areas, endangering national security.
If the above network and data risks are difficult for consumers to intuitively perceive in the process of using a car, then the most obvious "OTA upgrade" of user perception has become one of the most common problems in the current intelligent networked car. According to the data of the vehicle quality network, the number of complaints about "system upgrade problems" has exceeded 1,000 in the past three years, of which the number of complaints about related problems in the first quarter of 2022 alone reached 1,934, even exceeding the total number of complaints in 2021.
Judging from the specific complaints, the "system upgrade problem" involves various types of vehicle stability and safety. Among them, the "lock electricity" problem in the pure electric vehicle complaints accounted for a relatively high proportion, some owners reflected that in the case of no notice of the vehicle was remotely forced to upgrade the lock electric lock power, the endurance was significantly reduced, the power performance became worse, affecting the car experience; and in terms of safety, some fuel vehicle owners reflected that the vehicle had a reversing image Caton black screen failure, causing trouble for daily parking. In addition, there are also individual car owners who report that the use of driving assistance functions is limited and the brake assist system is lost after the top-end model they purchased is upgraded by the OTA, which seriously endangers driving safety.
Auto companies may welcome the good
How to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers is the key
It is precisely considering the obvious time gap between the iteration speed of automotive intelligent network technology and the update speed of industry laws and regulations, as well as a large number of factual fault problems, that it is very necessary to introduce sandbox supervision that is more in line with the development law of the industry.
Sandbox supervision is to encourage innovation in a safer way, especially for the new car-making forces that rely on new technologies, can find a better balance between innovation and supervision, and fully mobilize the enthusiasm of automobile companies in the research and development of new technologies, thereby promoting the continuous upgrading of China's automotive technology level. From the perspective of the market environment, the implementation of sandbox supervision has invisibly shortened the verification cycle before the listing of automotive companies' products, reduced product costs and delivery cycles, and is undoubtedly good news for automotive companies to improve profits and ensure the normal operation of the capital chain. For regulatory authorities, sandbox supervision is conducive to including the quality and safety problems caused by cutting-edge technologies into the scope of supervision earlier, so that post-event supervision becomes early supervision, and greatly improves regulatory efficiency.
Although it is more popular on the production side, sandbox regulation also faces some problems on the consumer side. First of all, due to the shortening of the product verification cycle, the new models launched by the automobile companies that join the sandbox supervision may only be the BETA version, and there are still doubts about whether consumers can accept the purchased models as "micro-flaws" or "semi-finished products"; secondly, the most important purpose of sandbox supervision is to improve vehicle safety, but there is not much binding force for enterprises to modify vehicle parameters without authorization through OTAs, etc. The follow-up may lead to more consumer disputes such as "locking power" and "locking power", and the vehicle mileage and performance are reduced for no reason. In the end, consumers suffer unnecessary losses.
summary
As a powerful supplement to the traditional regulatory approach, sandbox supervision can indeed eliminate some security risks and potential problems due to its certain advantages in terms of inclusiveness and flexibility, but can the final regulatory effect achieve the expected goal? How much can it play a role in improving the consumer environment in the automotive market? And how to avoid unnecessary consumer disputes? It remains to be seen.