A year has now passed since I was honoured to be invited to make a short speech at the inauguration of the Chinese Automotive Standards Internationalisation Centre (CASIC) on 21 June 2021. The inauguration ceremony was held in Tianjin China with many of the speakers and guests contributing via a video link.
Now, after a year of preparation, the CASIC Geneva office was officially opened on 28 June 2022, and I have had the chance to discuss the progress of CASIC, and its plans to contribute in the field of automotive lighting and light signalling with its director, Xie Dongming. He kindly invited me to meet him and his colleague in Geneva but due to last minute travel problems we met virtually in a very friendly video call that continued for almost three hours. I am grateful to Xie Dongming for helping me to write the in-depth report that you will find in this newsletter.
I know that you may be tired of my constant campaigning, but it is clear that Xie Dongming and I share a common passion concerning regulatory harmonisation.
Over recent years the time to update the Chinese GB standards has decreased, with closer and closer alignment with the UN Technical requirements for lighting and light-signalling. The presence of CASIC in Geneva is a very significant step forward to facilitate this development, and I know that Xie Dongming and the experts involved in CASIC will make a real difference to the work in Geneva related to harmonisation of lighting and light-signalling technical requirements.
I am confident that the technical barriers to automotive lighting and light-signalling can be demolished in the near future. Hopefully, this will encourage the governmental regulatory agencies, signatory to the UN 1958 and 1998 agreements, to find a pragmatic way to remove the political barriers to true harmonisation in the interest of traffic safety and commercial development.
I look forward to visiting Xie Dongming and the CASIC team at their Geneva office in the autumn.
