"I‘m committed to the security of the systems"
Mr Quernheim, first of all, congratulations on your election: you have been the new Chairman of the Board of the International Alliance for Mobility Testing and Standardisation (IAMTS) since October 2024. What is your vision/mission when you take office?
I am very much looking forward to the task. At IAMTS, we see ourselves as a link between stakeholders from the industry, regulators, approval and licensing authorities and standardisation organisations - worldwide.
We are a platform that develops solutions to open questions arising from the various developments in technology relating to highly automated or - in the next step - autonomous driving in the different regions of the world. As a representative of the TÜV Association, I am primarily committed to the safety of the systems, which must be guaranteed when operating on public roads. However, it is also a matter of making the approval and authorisation of the technologies manageable and scalable with the high and still increasing pace of technical development and ever shorter development and investment cycles.
In my view, one of the main priorities in the coming months will be to expand the membership base towards Asia and to coordinate the content of our work in the individual working groups, but also through overarching projects with the members of the IAMTS.
My vision is for the IAMTS to make a significant contribution to the harmonisation and synchronisation of regulations and test methods between the world's automotive markets
The topic of AI assurance in mobility requires a great deal of collaboration. Where do you see the biggest challenges?
We are all just at the beginning of the huge changes that artificial intelligence will bring. When we look at highly automated and autonomous driving, the main issue will be to be able to grasp the influence of artificial intelligence on the systems and make it traceable. The term currently being discussed here is ‘traceable AI’. Until this is achieved, it will not be possible to incorporate AI into the systems and integrate it into the current authorisation philosophy - at least if we focus on Europe. Regulation in Europe does not currently provide for the use of AI in the sense of machine learning in vehicles. And as things stand at the moment, that is a good thing.
The question rightly implies that great joint efforts are needed to accomplish this task. One of the main focal points to which the IAMTS has committed itself is that we want to and must build bridges between the different philosophies in the legal areas of the automotive world, from the USA to Europe and Asia. Our membership portfolio reflects precisely this idea of co-operation and will hopefully do so even more in the future.
What signals can and do you want to send to customers to increase their confidence in autonomous driving?
There are great reservations about the technology, albeit with regional differences. I believe this has a lot to do with communication and transparency. The complexity of the issues arises not only from the technology, but also from the major differences worldwide in the requirements that must be met in order to put a vehicle on the road. We have to break down the complexity into the essential points in an understandable way and make them available to the public.
In my view, the most important message is that there must continue to be testing organisations such as TÜV that are able to assess the safety and function of the systems. There is a great deal of trust in such institutions in Europe, but in other regions, such as the USA, there are also discussions about whether and how approval and monitoring functions can be introduced into the system, which has so far been largely based on self-certification by the industry. For TÜV Rheinland, under the umbrella of the TÜV Association, this is the motivation to invest time and money in its involvement in the IAMTS. We need to understand the technology in order to be able to assess and evaluate it. The International Alliance for Mobility Testing and Standardisation will be an important tool for this.
The interview was conducted in German and translated into English.