In June 2023, the international standard ISO/TR 9968: 2023 Road Vehicles—Functional Safety—The Application to Generic Rechargeable Energy Storage Systems for New Energy Vehicles, which was led by China, was officially released in the form of a technical report.

In recent years, with the accelerated development of automotive electrification, intelligence and networking technology, automotive functional safety and standards have been increasingly valued by the market and industry. In August, 2021, China proposed an international standard for the functional safety of rechargeable energy storage systems for new energy vehicles (including power batteries and supercapacitors) to the Technical Sub-committee of Electronic and Electrical Components and General Systems of the Road Vehicles Committee of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/TC22/SC32/WG8/TG1), and was approved to set up a special group for the standard (ISO/TC22/SC32) as the convener. Subsequently, China, in combination with its industrial development practice, and experts from Germany, the United States, Japan, France, Britain, Austria, Ireland, Canada and other countries jointly started the formulation of ISO/TR 9968 Standard.

Based on ISO 26262: 2018 Road Vehicle—Functional Safety, in terms of the characteristics of multi-technology coupling and complex safety risk factors of energy storage systems such as power batteries, ISO/TR 9968 Standard puts forward the safety architecture, failure hazard risk, safety scheme design, safety test and evaluation of rechargeable energy storage systems for new energy vehicles, as well as the functional safety requirements in the production, operation, maintenance and scrapping stages. It provides important technical support for the research and development, testing, operation, maintenance and popularization of new energy vehicles.

In the next step, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will organize China Automotive Technology and Research Center and other organizations to deeply participate in the preparation and revision of international standards in the fields of automotive functional safety on the principle of simultaneous research and formulation of international and domestic standards, and continuously enhance China’s participation and contribution in the coordination of international standards and regulations for automobiles.