China’s Changan Automobile has secured the country’s first Level 3 autonomous driving approval.

Level 3allows the vehicle to perform certain autonomous driving tasks under specific conditions, but the driver has to remain available to take over when requested.

The approval allows one of its passenger vehicles to operate single-lane automated driving on specified highway and urban expressway sections in south-west China’s Chongqing.

This follows extensive system-level validation of Changan’s L3 autonomous driving capabilities, supported by more than five million kilometres of real-world road testing. Testing covered a broad range of driving scenarios, spanning 185 categories – 49 per cent beyond regulatory benchmarks – with extreme conditions accounting for 36 per cent of total testing. On average, one complex risk scenario was encountered every 38.9km, demonstrating the system’s ability to operate safely and adaptively within its operational design conditions.

As one of the first two OEMs to receive L3 product access in China (the other is Beijing Automotive, www.baicgroup.com.cn), the approval represents a culmination of Changan’s more than four decades of vehicle manufacturing experience and its ongoing transformation towards intelligent mobility.

The approval reflects Changan’s safety-oriented, OEM-led self-development approach to L3 autonomous driving. Leveraging its in-house autonomous-driving capabilities and the SDA intelligence technology framework, Changan has built experience and implementation knowhow spanning system design and development, testing and validation, production and operations, and continuous iteration, supporting self-reliant and secure technological advancement.

Under the L3 programme, Changan emphasised a full-lifecycle, closed-loop safety system designed to safeguard L3 operation from development through real-world use. This safety fortress is structured across dedicated integration and development processes, multi-pillar validation, end-to-end quality management, always-on safety monitoring, and coordinated risk and incident response mechanisms, forming a continuous feedback loop to enhance safety performance.

To demonstrate safety at an engineering level, Changan has established an integrated development and validation approach for L3 autonomous driving that embeds safety requirements across system design, testing and operation. The framework addresses four core areas – functional safety, sotif (safety of the intended functionality), cyber security and data security – ensuring that automated driving functions are designed and verified with clearly defined boundaries.

Validation is supported by a combination of large-scale simulation, closed-course testing, real-world road testing, data-driven feedback loops and continuous safety monitoring. These efforts are underpinned by national-level intelligent vehicle safety research facilities and dedicated intelligent driving laboratories, providing verification coverage from development to on-road deployment.

For operational safety, Changan operates a monitoring platform that has run stably for 18 months, with reported data accuracy maintained at 100 per cent, and a 100 per cent success rate in issuing safety warnings. The platform conducts continuous, round-the-clock cloud-based analysis of cyber security and vehicle operating risks, enabling real-time monitoring, early risk alerts and coordinated response during on-road operation, ensuring that L3 functions remain within their defined operating conditions when deployed.

This progress in L3 autonomous driving is underpinned by a long-term global technology and R&D framework. The company operates a collaborative R&D network covering six countries and ten locations, supported by an R&D team of more than 24,000 professionals from 31 countries, 44 technology research and product development centres, 20 technology companies, and 180 laboratories. Backed by more than CN¥60bn in R&D investment and over 14,000 patent applications filed in the past three years, this infrastructure enables the agile and continuous evolution of Changan’s intelligent driving technologies.

Last month, Changan reached the roll-off of its 30 millionth vehicle. The car maker (www.globalchangan.com), one of China’s largest automotive groups, has 41 years of experience in automobile manufacturing and is headquartered in Chongqing. It operates 14 manufacturing bases and 39 plants worldwide, 79 branches and subsidiaries, sales and service networks in 115 countries and regions, and more than 14,000 global sales outlets. It employs over 80,000 people directly and supports more than one million jobs across its entire value chain. Changan’s portfolio includes its own brands, such as Changan and Avatr, alongside joint ventures such as Changan Ford and Changan Mazda.