China Approves National Standard for Automotive Software Quality and Defect Management

The State Administration for Market Regulation (Standardization Administration of China) has approved and released the national standard "Automotive Software Quality and Defect Management Specification" (GB/T 48140-2026). As "software-defined vehicles" have become a core trend in the automotive industry, software gives vehicles intelligent experiences while also introducing new safety risks. The frequent occurrence of software defects, combined with the normalization of software iterative upgrades, imposes stricter systemic requirements on automotive software quality and defect management. The standard applies the PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) and risk-based thinking to establish automotive-grade software quality and defect management specifications covering the full lifecycle of automotive software, including requirements analysis, design and implementation, integration, verification and validation, release management, and upgrade and maintenance, providing a unified framework for software quality and defect management in the automotive industry.

In terms of quality planning, the standard requires automotive producers, software providers and related organizations upstream and downstream in the supply chain to establish software quality and safety management systems, implement 10 key quality assurance activities including software safety management, avoidance of historical issues, and status reporting and monitoring, adapt to multiple development models, and strengthen control requirements for various objects such as artificial intelligence software, embedded software and cloud software. In terms of process quality assurance, the standard specifies detailed requirements for implementing quality assurance activities at each stage of automotive software development, integrates key quality activities into software development projects, ensures that each stage is standardized and controlled and that software products meet specified requirements, and promotes the simultaneous implementation of quality requirements determined during the planning stage and development activities.

In terms of key process reviews and software risk assessment, the standard sets review points for five key processes: software project planning, requirements analysis, design and implementation, software integration, and verification and validation, and allows combined implementation based on actual project conditions. The standard requires the establishment of a software risk assessment mechanism, incorporates software issues at each stage into graded assessment, and promotes a shift in quality control from "post-event handling" to "defect prevention." In terms of software defect management, the standard sets out full-process requirements from information collection and analysis, software problem identification, investigation, analysis and assessment, to recall decisions, software repair preparation, recall implementation and effectiveness evaluation, and provides rules for implementing recalls through over-the-air (OTA) updates, achieving closed-loop handling and continuous improvement of software defects.