Type approval / homologation
The regulatory certification that a vehicle type meets all applicable requirements before it can be sold — now extended deep into software.
Type approval (homologation) is the regulatory process certifying that a vehicle type meets all applicable technical requirements before it may be sold or registered in a market. In the EU and the broader UNECE framework, an approval issued by one member’s authority is recognized across the others; the US instead uses manufacturer self-certification against FMVSS rules.
Software changed what homologation covers. Approval requirements now include the manufacturer’s cybersecurity management system (R155), its software update management system (R156), and increasingly the behavior of driver-assistance features that can change after sale. An OTA update that alters a regulated function can invalidate an approval if not handled through the defined processes.
For SDV programs this makes homologation a continuous engineering discipline rather than a one-time gate — and a hidden bottleneck: feature velocity is limited not by what software teams can build, but by what can be proved compliant.
Related: EU Data Act (vehicle data) · UNECE R155 · UNECE R156