When it comes to rectifying car rims, we still have to obey the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The hidden door handles that have been complained about for so long were directly suppressed after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially released the new national standard GB 48001-2026 "Safety Technical Requirements for Automobile Door Handles" a few days ago.
Recently, it has served car companies as another dish. This time the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is targeting companies that want to save money on vehicle testing.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued an announcement saying that it has been revised"Access Review Requirements for Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers" and "Access Review Requirements for Road Motor Vehicle Products", effective from January 1, 2027.
This review requirement may sound unfamiliar to everyone, but in fact it is an essential step for car companies to launch new models.
Every time car companies come up with a new car, they must first submit the new car information and factory information to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and then review it together. If it is OK, it will be announced to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
It is equivalent to issuing you a "birth certificate" before you can sell it on the market.
The review system itself is relatively complex, involving hundreds of parameters of the car from size, safety to environmental protection. The purpose is also to ensure that the basic functions of the car you buy are OK.
We don’t need to worry about so much, let’s just look at the biggest change this time——New technical requirements for vehicle reliability have been added.
Reliability, to put it bluntly, is to put the car on various roads and run it for a certain mileage or for a certain period of time to see what problems the car has.
This sounds like it is necessary to build a car, right? But in the past, this test was all based on the car companies' own initiative, and each company's standards were different. Some people tested more, and some tested less.
Now the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology doesn't care about you or that, everyone must do it.
Specifically, nowTraditional energy vehicles need to carry out reliability verification tests of no less than 30,000km in accordance with GB/T 12678-2021 "Vehicle Reliability Driving Test Methods".
Although the national standard for reliability is a recommended national standard, it is equivalent to a mandatory standard.
New energy vehicles will also have to follow suit. The document does not clearly say how to do it. It only says that "it should be carried out in accordance with the final test procedures and test methods of relevant vehicles."
Brother Neck flipped through it casually. For hybrid models, there is GB/T 19750-2005 "Hybrid Electric Vehicle Finalization Test Procedures", which talks about reliability testing and following traditional models, that isSame 30,000 km.
As for pure electric vehicles, according to the provisions of GB/T 18388-2005 "Electric Vehicle Finalization Test Procedures", the total mileage of reliable driving only needs to be 50% of that of gasoline vehicles.That’s 15,000 kilometers.
I don’t know how you feel about it, but I immediately had two big questions after reading it.
First, it is also a car,Why can a pure electric vehicle only use half the power of a gasoline-powered vehicle?second,The reliability test only needs to run 30,000 kilometers. Isn’t this a little bit?After all, I can easily earn more than 20,000 yuan a year...
In order to find out these things, Brother Neck went to find out a few guys who have run vehicle tests, and I will chat with you below.
Let’s talk about the first one first.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, electric cars have fewer test miles than gasoline cars, which actually makes sense to a certain extent.
An engineer who does vehicle performance testing told me that the tests here can be roughly divided into two categories. The first category is reinforced durable roads, which are the kind of abnormal non-paved roads that can knock out a person's lungs. The purpose of running this kind of road is mainly to look at the vehicle structure and suspension strength.
There is also a type on the track, such as the high-loop test, where the vehicle makes crazy circles at a high speed of one or two hundred yards. This category mainly tests the reliability of the transmission system.
Because the tram does not have a complex structure like an engine or gearbox, and the transmission system is much simpler, so in theory, it can travel less time on such roads.
Moreover, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not clearly state the specified mileage of new energy vehicles this time, which is obviously a reservation.
The current two national standards on the reliability of new energy vehicles were both released in 2005. The new energy at that time and the new energy now are completely products of two worlds.
Therefore, if the national standard is updated later, the review standards will also change.
Let’s look at the second question:Is running a 30,000-kilometer test enough?
To put it bluntly, 30,000 kilometers is indeed not a very high standard. Many car companies have their own standards higher than this, but it is not low either.
The original intention of reliability testing is to be as close as possible to the actual usage scenarios of users. For example, in the national reliability standard, a mileage distribution ratio based on user surveys is given. Taking passenger cars as an example, 55% of usage scenarios are urban roads, 20% are highways, and only 5% are non-paved roads.
But a car has a lifespan of several decades and a total mileage of tens or millions of kilometers. It is impossible for car companies to really test it for such a long time. So everyone usesReinforcement testingThis method uses tens of thousands of kilometers of difficult roads to simulate hundreds of thousands of kilometers of conventional roads.
Come, let me show you an example of experiment.
Here, a car is first tested on hellish difficult roads, which are all cobblestone roads, Belgian roads, pothole roads, and vibrating roads that you cannot walk on once a year. Each type of road is tortured hundreds or thousands of times.
This part is a reinforced durable road with a total length of 8850km.
After that, the car will have to drive on gravel roads, dirt roads and high loops, and even go to places like salt water pools and mud pools.
In the end, the car ran for less than 30,000 kilometers and could simulate the user's scenario of 240,000 kilometers. Of course, in different sites, the working conditions are different, and the simulation conversion coefficients will also be different.
But no matter what, running 30,000 kilometers in the test is not the same thing as what we understand. At least we can still measure something.
OK, these two questions are clear. Let’s talk about the impact of this new regulation.
Originally, I thought that this new rule would make people in the industry busy. Who knows, some of the guys have nothing to do, and they are still doing whatever they should do, because they have to run these tests and the mileage is higher.
A chassis system supplier told me that their part-level reliability testing is to be done for 30,000 kilometers, simulating 200,000 kilometers of user mileage. When it comes to the OEM, the vehicle-level requirements will be even higher.
Another car company person said that just to test the durability of the transmission system, they have toRun 30,000 kilometers of high-altitude loops, 6,000 kilometers of mountain roads, and another 6,000 kilometers of urban roads.These do not include tests in plateau, alpine, and high-temperature zones.
Generally speaking, the main purpose of the new testing regulations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is to draw a bottom line for the industry and plug the loopholes that some car companies love to exploit.
In recent years, the car industry has been very sophisticated. Some people are really improving technology and functions to make better smart driving and better chassis.
But there is still a wave of people who are cutting costs without a bottom line, using simulation instead of road testing, and launching new products before testing is completed. A car can be revised several times a year, and cars can be built faster than mobile phones.
This has caused bad money to start driving out good money, and it’s time to take care of it.
After all, in history, there are many examples of laziness in testing that eventually led to big problems.
For example, in the Volkswagen emissions scandal, the Volkswagen Group was fined an astronomical amount of more than 30 billion U.S. dollars. There was also Japan's Takata airbag testing fraud, which ultimately led to the direct collapse of this nearly century-old company.
The powerful hands of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology are telling car companies that actual testing is irreplaceable, and you can’t get away with it. Brother Neck also hopes that from now on, the industry will change the tricks of testing and shrinking.
Cars are not fast-moving consumer goods. When we all pay attention to safety, every player will ultimately benefit.