Safety as Foundation, Innovation as Direction: BAIC’s Journey in Building a Comprehensive Safety Assurance System for Intelligent Connected Vehicles
On December 15, the ARCFOX Alpha S (L3 Edition) from BAIC Group officially received product access approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China for autonomous driving vehicles, and will soon commence L3 conditional automated driving pilot operations in designated areas of Beijing. This milestone marks China’s autonomous driving technology progressively advancing toward mass production and represents a crucial transition for BAIC Group from technical validation to commercial application in the autonomous driving sector.
With the rapid advancement of automotive intelligence and connectivity, intelligent connected vehicles, born from the deep integration of the automotive industry with cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, and big data, have become a critical strategic direction for the global automotive industry. Autonomous driving technology has swiftly emerged as a focal point for industry-wide deployment. During this pivotal period of industrial transformation, BAIC Group deeply recognizes that the core value of autonomous driving technology lies in providing safer and more reliable mobility solutions. This L3 access pilot program not only evaluates product safety standards but also rigorously examines BAIC Group’s systematic safety infrastructure achievements. This further validates BAIC Group’s unwavering core philosophy: safety is the lifeline of intelligent connected vehicle development, and systematic capabilities are the fundamental guarantee for sustainable corporate growth.
01 Strategic elevation
Positioning safety as a group-level priority
Based on industry development trends and Beijing’s strategic positioning, since 2024, BAIC Group has leveraged its “Three-Year Leap Forward Initiative” to comprehensively advance intelligent transformation and upgrading. Seizing the opportunity presented by the national L3 access pilot program, BAIC Group has conducted a comprehensive overhaul of its intelligent connected technology management system, establishing core organizational capabilities spanning the entire process from R&D, production, and verification to operations and services. This has resulted in mass production R&D, manufacturing, and operational support capabilities for L3 and higher-level autonomous driving products.
BAIC Group has not only enhanced its autonomous driving system development and testing capabilities in collaboration with strategic partners but, more importantly, has constructed a “comprehensive safety” operational assurance system spanning the entire value chain from research, production, supply, sales, to service. This system integrates three major business frameworks, enterprise, product, and operational assurance, encompassing capability modules including design verification, functional safety, safety of the intended functionality, cybersecurity, data security, software update security, risk and incident management, and safety monitoring with emergency response. This ensures the enterprise possesses comprehensive safety assurance capabilities for scaled development and production, meeting market expectations for highly safe autonomous driving vehicle products. Additionally, BAIC Group has explored and established a complete autonomous driving operational system, including commercial operation management and service systems, vehicle operational safety monitoring systems, and procedures for handling road traffic violations and accidents, effectively ensuring the safe operation of autonomous driving vehicles on public roads.
02 Systematic innovation
Building the “one core, three rings” full-lifecycle safety assurance system
To transform safety philosophy into executable and verifiable engineering practices, BAIC Group has constructed the “one core, three rings” autonomous driving product safety development and assurance system during the BAIC Group’s intelligent transformation.
The “one core” embodies the core philosophy of “system-guaranteed safety”, establishing a development process system oriented toward safety design and verification. BAIC Group has reconstructed its autonomous driving vehicle product development process, integrating safety requirements throughout all stages from requirement definition to system design. By establishing modular specialized development processes covering vehicles, systems, and components, and implementing a “dual closed-loop verification, three-level review” quality control mechanism, BAIC Group ensures that safety requirements are designed, verified, and implemented synchronously with product performance. Additionally, BAIC Group has established an autonomous driving technology development platform, providing systematic support for efficient, high-quality R&D work.
The ‘three rings” constitute a triple-layer safety protection system covering the entire product lifecycle. First is the testing and verification assurance ring: BAIC Group has pioneered an industry-leading testing and verification system that integrates functional and performance validation. By constructing a “three-pillar” verification framework comprising “simulation testing, closed proving ground testing, and open road testing”, the system ensures that autonomous driving system behavior is deeply aligned with China’s complex road traffic environment. Second is the process safety assurance ring: establishing a “five-in-one” product development process safety assurance system, with particular emphasis on constructing a defense-in-depth security architecture coordinating “cloud-end, network-end, and vehicle-end”, and establishing a lifecycle-spanning software update management mechanism to comprehensively enhance functional safety, safety of the intended functionality, cybersecurity, data security, and software update security management. Third is the operational monitoring assurance ring: through deployment of the enterprise autonomous driving safety monitoring platform, achieving 7×24 h status monitoring and data analysis of vehicles in operation, significantly enhancing proactive safety monitoring and emergency response capabilities, and forming a safety management closed loop of “operational monitoring - data analysis - continuous optimization”.
03 Engineering practice
Implementing an autonomous driving product safety philosophy with the most rigorous standards
Safety is the baseline for automotive products. Building upon the foundation of the aforementioned safety philosophy and safety system infrastructure, BAIC Group has leveraged its technical accumulation and engineering practice in intelligent connected vehicle safety to develop the L3-level autonomous driving vehicle, ARCFOX Alpha S (L3 Edition), for this access pilot application. The product comprehensively exemplifies autonomous driving product safety philosophy across multiple design dimensions.
(1) Multi-layer redundant software and hardware architecture: Building the safety foundation for autonomous driving products
First, it is equipped with a high-performance redundant sensor system. The ARCFOX Alpha S (L3 Edition) features 34 high-performance sensors, including 3 LiDARs. These sensors, functioning as keen “eyes”, work collaboratively to achieve 360-degree comprehensive environmental perception coverage around the vehicle, providing precise and complete environmental information for system decision-making.
Second, it employs a fully redundant safety architecture. The ARCFOX Alpha S (L3 Edition) draws upon mature and rigorous safety design principles from the aviation sector, implementing full-chain safety redundancy and backup across perception, decision-making, steering, braking, communication, power supply, positioning, and other aspects. This means that even in extreme circumstances where a single system experiences occasional failure, redundant systems can rapidly provide backup, ensuring fundamental safety under failure conditions and providing reliable safety assurance for drivers and passengers. Additionally, it is equipped with a complete and traceable autonomous driving data recording system capable of comprehensively and securely recording vehicle operational status during system activation, providing reliable data support for system operational analysis, liability determination, and continuous optimization.
(2) Rigorous testing and verification standards: Building systematic product safety assurance
During the product design phase, BAIC Group established the overall safety objective for L3 conditional automated driving products: “safety performance superior to attentive human drivers”. To verify that the product achieves this design objective, comprehensive and thorough testing and safety assessment plans were formulated.
Throughout the verification process, the product has undergone rigorous testing, completing over 800,000 equivalent kilometers of testing to date, achieving comprehensive and complete coverage of scenarios within the operational design domain. Not only has simulation testing, proving ground testing, and actual road testing been conducted for the L3 product functionality itself, but multi-dimensional saturation testing has also been performed for functional safety, safety of the intended functionality, cybersecurity, data security, and software update security, fully demonstrating the reliability and safety of the ARCFOX Alpha S (L3 Edition) autonomous driving system and providing industry practice for mass production application of conditional automated driving.
04 Looking forward
Continuously improving safety systems, leading high-quality industry development
Obtaining L3-level autonomous driving vehicle product access approval represents an important milestone in BAIC Group’s autonomous driving product safety practice. As autonomous driving technology continues to evolve, safety will remain BAIC Group’s unwavering baseline. BAIC Group will take this pilot program as a new starting point, continuously improving its intelligent connected vehicle product safety system, deepening core technology and product R&D with an open and collaborative philosophy, and continuously creating more safe and reliable intelligent connected vehicle products.
BAIC Group firmly believes that only by integrating safety philosophy into every aspect of enterprise development and ensuring every technological innovation with rigorous engineering systems can we truly earn users’ long-term trust and thereby promote high-quality development of China’s automotive industry in its intelligent transformation. BAIC Group is committed to working hand-in-hand with industry partners to jointly build the safety cornerstone of China’s intelligent connected vehicles, creating safer, more efficient, and better future mobility experiences for consumers.
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