Vehicle quality and safety

Our approach to quality supports our strategic ambition to become a world-leading sustainable ultra-luxury automotive business. Our comprehensive commitment encompasses build, product and drive quality, both in the short-term and the long-term with our ISO 9001 certification covering design, engineering and manufacture and associated spare parts and components including our supporting parts distribution and warehouse operations (Gaydon, St Athan, Wolverton Mill and Wellesbourne – Unit 2). As per our ISO certification we have developed a quality operating system that spans across our whole vehicle process with a ‘plan, do, check, action’ approach, underpinned by our Quality Policy and a Company-wide quality management review and governance structure. The basis of this is a monthly Quality Committee, setting the strategic aims and objectives and reviewing performance against these. Weekly tactical meetings are focused on specific quality concerns and supported daily by Operational Quality meetings held at our manufacturing locations. Quality is led by the Director of Quality who reports to the Chief Industrial Officer, with the Aston Martin Board receiving a quarterly update on quality performance.

Vehicle compliance with the latest safety requirements in all markets in which our vehicles are sold is critical. Whilst these regulations define the minimum safety requirements for our vehicles, Aston Martin considers all state-of-the-art safety standards at the time of designing our vehicles. Within Aston Martin, safety engineers maintain and update a comprehensive set of global vehicle safety targets in conjunction with our legal and certification department, who are responsible for ensuring Aston Martin conforms with the applicable laws in worldwide markets. In this way, our safety targets and performance are transparent and visible across the business. The safety standards encompass protection for vehicle occupants, a strong and safe vehicle structure, seats designed for child safety systems, a safe fuel system installation, safe high voltage systems and safety for other road users.

We engage with regulators to maintain a detailed insight into the evolving regulatory landscape. Our colleagues participate in future legislation sessions with the UK Government, European Commission and industry groups, ensuring that the Company can understand developments in regulatory requirements.

Features designed to enhance safety include core aspects such as strength of the vehicle body and crash structures, chassis control and braking systems, interior and restraint system design and the electronic control systems fitted to vehicles. The interior layout is designed to maintain drivers focus and attention on the road with their hands on the wheel, with carefully selected key control functions ergonomically assessed and made available as physical buttons to minimise driver distractions. Our current production vehicles are equipped with active safety features designed for crash prevention and the enhanced protection of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. In this way, our vehicles deliver a balance between safety, control and performance, enhancing the pleasure of driving without compromising safety.

During vehicle development, extensive use is made of simulation and virtual  development tools, reducing the materials invested in vehicle testing and therefore waste. These tools allow the safety development of vehicles to be undertaken with exterior and interior design teams to ensure compliance to pedestrian and occupant safety standards, and to work with component development engineers in all areas to ensure their systems contribute to overall vehicle safety standards.

As passive safety standards and systems reach their maturity and approach their maximum potential, Aston Martin is increasingly focusing on Active Safety and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (‘ADAS’) systems to ensure that our vehicles provide ever improving levels of safety to our customers. Driver error is a factor in 95% of road accidents. Active safety and ADAS features on our vehicles are designed to reduce the occurrences of human error, or to reduce the severity of the implications of that human error.

We take a holistic approach to active safety by ‘supporting the driver with a Hands-on (wheel), Eyes-on (road) and Mind-on (Driving Task) philosophy’ by minimising distractions and ensuring an effective human-machine interface (for example hard buttons in an easy to find and consistent location, not just relying upon a touchscreen that changes) and the addition of ADAS features to achieve this.

Our core vehicles include, as standard, many of the latest ADAS features and these are available in all worldwide markets to ensure a consistent level of safety to our customers wherever they live. Many of the features are required to fulfil regulations in some markets, but Aston Martin looks to go beyond these requirements and add features that are state-of-the-art and consistent with our Hands-on, Eyes-on, Mind-on philosophy. 

To develop these ADAS systems, Aston Martin performs extensive vehicle testing both at dedicated facilities and on public roads and uses state-of-the-art simulation and hardware-in-the-loop tools to ensure their robustness. We work with technology partners using a systems engineering approach to ADAS feature and software development and follow the principles of ISO 26262 Functional Safety (‘FuSa’), ISO 21448 Safety of the Intended functionality (‘SOTIF’) and ASPICE L2 (Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination) when developing these systems.