China put an intelligent-driving standardization pilot out for public comment
A pre-award notice from China's standards administration lists a Tianjin pilot for automotive intelligent-driving underlying support, to be run by the state test house that calls itself the country's first national intelligent and connected vehicle center.
China’s standards administration published a notice on September 23 listing the national standardization pilot projects it proposes to award for 2026, and opened them for public comment. The notice was issued by the administration’s standards technology department, against its April call for applications.
Item 41 in the attached project table is a Tianjin Dongli pilot for automotive intelligent-driving underlying support. The organization named to carry it out is CATARC Automotive Test Center (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., the state vehicle research group’s Tianjin test house.
It is the only on-road intelligent-driving entry in the table. One other automated-driving row sits under the high-technology heading: an unmanned-driving pilot for open-pit mining in Longyan, Fujian, carried by EACON Mining Technology. The remaining vehicle-adjacent rows cover in-plant special vehicles in Zhengzhou, inland-waterway vessels in Hubei, low-altitude powertrain testing in Chongqing, and new-energy vehicle inspection and testing in Dezhou, Shandong.
The detail is not on the web page. The published notice carries only the announcement and a contact number; the entire project list sits in a separate document attached to it. The notice gives a comment period running to September 30, and mistypes the year of that period as 2025.
A standardization pilot is a designation rather than a standard. It commits an institute and a location to develop and trial standardization work in a named area, and the technical content does not yet exist. China’s mandatory national standard for Level 3 and Level 4 automated driving is due to take effect in July 2027.