About State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy

State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy

The State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy (Chinese: 汽车安全与节能国家重点实验室) is a national State Key Laboratory hosted by Tsinghua University in Beijing and attached to the university's School of Vehicle and Mobility. It is China's national research platform for vehicle safety and energy, bringing together work on crash safety and occupant protection, vehicle dynamics and intelligent driving safety, energy-saving and new-energy vehicle powertrains, and the testing and evaluation methods used across the Chinese automotive industry. As part of the Ministry of Science and Technology state key laboratory system, which counted 533 approved laboratories as of 2023, it anchors Tsinghua's automotive engineering programme and works closely with domestic manufacturers on the safety and energy technologies that underpin the world's largest car market and car-producing country.

Origins in Tsinghua automotive engineering

The laboratory's roots lie in the long history of vehicle engineering teaching at Tsinghua University. The university's own historical account traces vehicle engineering education to 1932, when the Department of Mechanical Engineering was established and an internal combustion engine course formed part of the curriculum. Following the nationwide reorganisation of higher education in 1952, an automobile major was set up within Tsinghua's Department of Power Machinery and an automobile teaching and research group was organised. In 1980 the Department of Automotive Engineering was officially established, with the Automobile and Internal Combustion Engine majors, supported by funding from the Automobile Bureau of the First Ministry of Machinery Industry. Construction of a dedicated research building and laboratory for the Automotive Research Institute began in 1988 and was completed in April 1993, providing the physical base from which the national laboratory would grow.

Establishment as a state key laboratory

According to the School of Vehicle and Mobility's historical record, the State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, based on the Department of Automotive Engineering, was officially put into operation and opened to the public in 1995, becoming the first state key laboratory in the field of automotive engineering in China. That founding status matters to its identity: it was created at a moment when China's domestic car industry was expanding rapidly and needed an independent national centre for the fundamental science of vehicle safety and energy use, rather than research scattered across individual manufacturers. Its place in the state key laboratory system has since been maintained through successive national evaluations, and in 2015 its main office and laboratory were relocated to the Lee Shau Kee Science and Technology Building on the Tsinghua campus in Beijing.

Host institution and academic setting

The laboratory is embedded in Tsinghua University, founded in 1911 and consistently described as one of China's most prestigious universities. Its immediate host, formerly the Department of Automotive Engineering and now the School of Vehicle and Mobility, is regarded in university materials as one of the leading organisations in China for educating automotive talent, undertaking research, shaping national policy and organising international programmes in the automotive field. Professor Minggao Ouyang, a leading figure in new-energy vehicle research who received his doctorate from the Technical University of Denmark in 1993 and served as director of the Department of Automotive Engineering, has been identified in Tsinghua materials as director of the laboratory and as a Changjiang Scholar distinguished professor. The laboratory benefits from that setting: doctoral and master's researchers in vehicle engineering work alongside its research teams, and its findings feed directly into Tsinghua's teaching in automotive engineering.

Vehicle safety research

Safety is the first half of the laboratory's name and a defining strand of its programme. Its work covers crash safety and occupant protection, including how vehicle structures absorb impact energy and how restraint systems protect the people inside, as well as vehicle dynamics and the stability and control questions that determine whether a crash happens at all. As driving assistance and automated driving functions have spread, intelligent driving safety has become part of the same agenda, addressing the testing and validation of systems that perceive the road environment and act on it. The laboratory's testing and evaluation research is significant beyond academia because Chinese vehicle safety standards and assessment practices draw on exactly this kind of independent, university-based evidence, and its researchers work with domestic manufacturers on applying safety engineering to production vehicles.

Energy and new-energy vehicle research

The second half of the laboratory's name covers energy saving and new-energy vehicles. Its teams research energy-saving powertrains for conventional vehicles and the electric and hybrid powertrains that have come to dominate Chinese automotive development, including electric drive systems and the control of advanced hybrid powertrains. Battery research is a visible part of the published output: papers affiliated to the laboratory in journals such as Frontiers in Energy Research have addressed lithium-ion battery thermal management, including flat heat pipe cooling systems for battery modules, semiconductor refrigeration for 48-volt mild-hybrid packs, and ultrasonic tomography for non-destructive detection of defects inside lithium-ion batteries. That work reflects a central engineering reality the laboratory addresses: the performance, lifespan and safety of an electric vehicle depend heavily on keeping its battery within a favourable temperature range and detecting internal defects before they become hazards.

Testing, evaluation and standards

A national laboratory in this field is expected to do more than publish: it develops the methods by which vehicles are tested and judged. The laboratory's brief explicitly includes the testing and evaluation methods used by the Chinese auto industry, and its research has supported the development of Chinese vehicle safety standards. Work of this kind — crash test methodology, energy consumption measurement, battery safety assessment — is what allows regulators, manufacturers and consumers to compare vehicles on a common basis. The laboratory's position within a university, independent of any single manufacturer, gives its evaluation research a particular weight in an industry where the major producers are also major research funders.

Industry collaboration and technology transfer

The laboratory works closely with domestic manufacturers on safety and energy technologies, and Tsinghua has built dedicated channels for moving its automotive research toward production. In 2011 the university established the Suzhou Automotive Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Wujiang and Xiangcheng as a base for transforming research results and incubating industrial applications based on the automotive department's work. In 2016 the China-US International Joint Research Center for Clean Vehicle Technology was recognised by the Ministry of Science and Technology as a national base for international technology collaboration, reflecting the laboratory community's engagement with clean vehicle research beyond China. Visiting scholars from overseas centres, such as the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, have been hosted at the laboratory for collaboration meetings on electronics reliability and battery research, underlining its role as an international point of contact for Chinese automotive science.

Research community and training

As a state key laboratory, the institution is open in the formal sense of the Chinese system: it operates as a shared national platform, hosting visiting researchers and running open research projects alongside its resident teams. Its grants acknowledge support from bodies including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and its open-fund projects, cited in published papers under the laboratory's own grant series, allow researchers from other institutions to work on automotive safety and energy topics under its umbrella. Through Tsinghua's graduate programmes it trains the doctoral researchers who staff China's vehicle manufacturers, research institutes and regulatory bodies, and events such as the Tsinghua International Summer School on Advanced Automotive Technology, with its themes of hybrid electric and connected vehicle technology, have used visits to the laboratory to show overseas students the state of Chinese automotive research.

Place in China's automotive transformation

The laboratory's history spans the transformation of China from a minor car producer into the world's largest car market and producer, and its twin themes of safety and energy map directly onto the two questions that transformation raised: how to make vastly more vehicles without a corresponding toll of road deaths, and how to power them without deepening dependence on imported oil and urban air pollution. Its engineering of electric and hybrid vehicles, its battery safety science and its work on intelligent driving safety all address the current phase of that transformation, in which Chinese manufacturers compete on electrification and automation. Few Chinese research institutions combine, as this laboratory does, a founding claim as the country's first state key laboratory in automotive engineering, a home in one of its most prestigious universities, and a direct line into the standards and products of its largest industry.

Profile summary

The State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy is based at Tsinghua University in Beijing, attached to the School of Vehicle and Mobility. Put into operation in 1995 as the first state key laboratory in automotive engineering in China, it conducts national-level research on crash safety and occupant protection, vehicle dynamics and intelligent driving safety, energy-saving and new-energy vehicle powertrains, battery systems and the testing and evaluation methods used by the Chinese auto industry. It is profiled in this directory as a distinct national research institution within China's state key laboratory system.