Volkswagen Group China obtained an L3 road-test license in Hefei and started testing

Volkswagen Group China said on October 26 that it had obtained a license for Level 3 autonomous driving road testing in Hefei, Anhui province, and that testing had formally started.

The company said the license allows compliant real-world road testing and large-scale data collection in the city, and called it an important step toward Level 3 technology readiness in 2027. It said the license was granted under what it described as the most stringent Level 3 regulatory framework currently in force in China, and that its system fully satisfies the latest mandatory safety-design standard. The release did not name that standard.

The work runs through CARIZON, the group’s local intelligent-driving center and a joint venture with Horizon Robotics, which has launched Volkswagen’s first full-scenario driver assistance system in China, Hyper Sense 8. Volkswagen said its in-house world model, GAIA 2.0, runs driver-assistance safety simulation equivalent to five million kilometers of real driving per day, trained on up to 30 million scenario clips collected from roads, against a target of ten million kilometers of training mileage per day. It said its in-house C7H system-on-chip, which it describes as supporting up to Level 4 capability, was progressing steadily.

Ralf Brandstätter, chairman and chief executive of Volkswagen Group China, said the test qualification lets the company test in Hefei’s real traffic environment and achieve large-scale data collection.

Volkswagen Group’s global newsroom carried nothing on the license, and the release named no models, test routes or fleet size. The company said it would hold its first Volkswagen Group China Technology Day in Hefei on October 28.