Automotive e-ssentials

Especially in Europe, every vehicle - passenger cars, trucks, busses, agricultural vehicles, motor bikes and construction machinery - needs to fulfill the required regulations for homologation in order to be registered and sold on the market. The same counts for products. Thereby, homologation itself describes the process of testing and approval of new developed vehicles. A vehicle can just be legally used on the street if it successfully passed the homologation process.

Based on these regulations, every Korean company with an interest to export their products or vehicles to Europe also needs fulfill these regulations. If a vehicle is not homologated it will not get permission to be established on the European market. Those regulations also exist for other markets like China with CCC or Brazil with INMETRO. Based on this TÜV SÜD is now expanding the homologation business in Korea to provide local support for Korean companies and foreign companies who like to enter the market.

As the homologation process is very complex, there is not just one simple answer to describe the homologation process. A typical approval process in e.g. Europe starts with the customer inquiry which is followed by a conversation about the product which should be inspected. Afterwards the customer´s wishes and the test basis are discussed. Based on all this information the inspection is planned, a suitable lab is selected and a Worst Case scenario is defined. Then the inspection process can start. After the inspection the inspection results as well as the documents of the manufacturer are evaluated. Finally, a technical report is created which will be forwarded to the approval authority. After they approved it, the customer will get his approval certificate with which he could start to produce his product for the European market. Thereby, the time and costs can differ between type approval processes which depend on the product type, the variety of products and the number of product version which need to be inspected.

E-mobility

E-vehicles are generally treated in the same way as any other vehicle for homologation. But of course, there could be special requirements needed solely for E-vehicles, e.g. if an electric vehicle should fulfill the regular framework directive 2007/46/EC and additionally several special requirements due the HV-components.

The South Korea government is also pushing e-mobility with legislative policies, offered incentives and the development of charging infrastructure within the country. To further promote this, the reliability and quality (e.g. stability and lifetime) of batteries used in electric vehicles has to be ensured. Testing and certification of those components becomes even more important in the country. For the usage of those e-vehicles it is also not just vital that the charging infrastructure is available but also that the charger and charging components itself work in a faultless manner. Measures for electrical and environmental safety as well as electromagnetic compatibility can support to detect possible risks and flaws.

Autonomous driving

The South Korea government also puts a lot of effort in the development of autonomous driving technologies. A separate self-driving testing ground has been already build to test the safety of automated vehicles under simulated real-life conditions. Furthermore, local manufactures already got the allowance to test prototypes on local roads. Our global experts are working on the development of new testing approaches, combining real and virtual testing for automated driving to foster the right methods for homologation of automated vehicles. We are already working closely together with Korean technical institutes and companies to further develop new testing approaches and facilitate those new automated technologies. One of our next steps is therefore to further expand especially our team for highly automated driving in Korea.

Korean manufacturers are affected by regulation changes

All in all, the effort for testing and type approval becomes more and more challenging as new regulations emerge or existing regulations are changing.

Related to whole vehicle type approval procedure the new regulation WLTP, which is the newest requirement for emission, must be considered during homologation. Also, E-Call for M1 and CO2-simulation for N-vehicle category has to be taken into account. These new regulations are just effecting passenger cars. For agricultural machinery, a new upcoming trend and important regulation would be 167/2013 and 168/2013 which is the framework for motor bikes but can be also adopted to agricultural machinery. Also, a big change in the area of autonomous driving is expected as new regulation for homologation have to be defined to close the existing gap of current ones, which do not meet the necessary safety requirements needed for automated vehicles.

Our local experts are happy to support you through whole development and approval process. By benefiting from our global homologation network and homologation knowledge our experts can accompany you by receiving global market access for your products.

If you have any questions and you would like to get in contact with our experts, please contact us via [email protected]