The State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control (ASCL) is one of the first national key laboratories, with a focus on automotive engineering technologies and product development.

ASCL was ratified to build in 1989. The first driving simulator in China was initiated to develop with a loan of 25million Chinese RMB from the World Bank in 1993. Based on the general scheme in which whole system was designed and integrated by ADSL, key parts were imported abroad, ordinary parts were made at home, and all software was developed by ADSL, the ADSL driving simulator was successfully developed in 1996. The simulator got through national acceptance and was assessed as "Asian First, World-leading" in December of the same year and then formally opened to domestic and foreign public in 1997. ASCL continuously passed the national evaluation organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology with excellent results in 2003 and 2008.

The construction of ASCL relies on Mechanical Engineering of Jilin University, a national key discipline, and ASCL owns two primary discipline doctoral programs and two post-doctoral research stations including Mechanical Engineering and Power Engineering and Engineering Thermophysics.

The pillar of the ASCL development is the Vehicle Engineering discipline at Jilin University (formerly well-known as Jilin University of Technology), which always ranks the first in state key disciplines evaluation. Meanwhile, ASCL shares interdisciplinary and complementary advantages with other disciplines such as Power Machinery and Engineering, Mechatronics, Transportation, Control, Communication and Mechanics.

Through nearly two decades of construction and development, ASCL has become a major research base for foundational, generic and cutting-edge technologies of Chinese automotive industry product development and for the high-level personnel training. What is more, it also supports the establishment and perfection of independent innovation system for the national automotive industry product development technology. Besides, ASCL has a certain degree academic impact on the international automotive engineering technologies on behalf of China.