MIIT Seeks Public Comment on Five Mandatory Automotive National Standards, Specifies Blue-Green External Indicator Lights for Intelligent Driving

On November 3, it was reported that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently solicited public opinions on five mandatory national standards for automobiles, among which regulations were made for external indicator lights for intelligent driving, selecting blue-green as the signal indicating autonomous driving status. In terms of control logic, the specification requires that the lights be bound to the autonomous driving system, automatically illuminating when L3-level functions are activated and extinguishing synchronously when the system exits, with drivers unable to switch them on or off manually. The standard refines indicators such as luminous intensity, angle, and installation position, locks down light performance through chromaticity coordinates, and allows sharing of the light-emitting area with position lights and daytime running lights. Under the new regulations, only two models nationwide can legally illuminate this blue-green light. For existing vehicles equipped with the lights, those already delivered and registered may continue normal use; subsequent OTA upgrades, model facelifts, and new vehicle filings must complete compliance adjustments in accordance with the new standard. At the technical level, most new high-level intelligent driving models use LIN bus communication, allowing lights to be turned off or colors switched through software adjustments and compliance completed via OTA remote upgrades; some early models adopted single-color LED beads with no communication bus design, and rectification requires replacement of lighting hardware.