China CVIS Market — Diving into the Roadside
In August, the news about a 40-mile corridor plan in Michigan dedicated to autonomous vehicles was interpreted by Chinese media as a sign of CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure System) emerging in the US. It is often believed that the US is ahead with autonomous driving technologies while China is early with CVIS deployment. Ranking aside, CVIS has been taken on as a national-level strategy in China to achieve the ultimate autonomous driving.
In an earlier post, I briefly went through CVIS motivation, why China could be an early adopter, market size, industry chain and major pilot projects. Here I am diving into the roadside market combining RSU, sensors, MEC, cloud control platform, etc.
Continued policy support
Pilot operations of smart road have showed a certain level of improved safety and efficiency that facilitated the continued support and investment from the government.
Huhangyong Smart Expressway is one of the projects initiated in 2018 to transform the oldest expressway within Zhejiang province to a smart one. By May this year, a section of the smart expressway had been in operation for 6 months with good amount of data feedback.
The configuration is a set of mm-Wave radar and camera every 250 meters to collect data (traffic flow, speed, unusual events, etc.) and send to the cloud for aggregation. Then the road condition is shared with drivers and passengers on electric screens that replaced the traditional road signs. The information is refreshed every 5 minutes for maximum accuracy.
On average, vehicle speed has increased by 8%, road capacity increased by 20%, congestion time reduced by 10%, the travel time prediction accuracy rate reached 90%, road accidents decreased by 10%, and rescue time was shortened by 10%.
A number of policies have been issued to promote the construction of smart roads this year. Taking August as an example, the Ministry of Transport released an instructive document on new infrastructure in transportation field signifying a deep coverage of sensors. Also, a group standard for V2X roadside infrastructure was officially announced, which went effective from September 1.
Deployment in specific scenarios first
Smartening up roadside infrastructure is a long-term process. Meanwhile, scenarios application is believed to be an effective model as well as a short-tem goal, which means to deploy smart sensing equipment in expressways and city roads intersections or implement smart poles.
For example, the construction of first smart highway in Hubei province kicked off in July of this year where a camera monitor will be installed every 150 meters on each side of the road.
Also in July, the very first 5G multi-function poles in China have been implemented on the Shenzhen section of Guangzhou-Shenzhen Coastal Expressway. Each pole is equipped with 5G base station, smart lighting, security monitoring, emergency broadcasting, weather monitoring, etc.
The Hangshaoyong Smart Expressway (covered in an earlier post) will have V2X equipment installed every 200 meters including RSU, cameras, and radars.
CVIS vendors and competitive landscape
There are 14 local CVIS vendors on the China market and 2 overseas companies (Cohda Wireless and Savari) covering China business.
Genvict is a publicly listed company with multiple products and solutions dedicated to intelligent transportation, including Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system and solutions, vehicle management and enforcement solutions for smart urban mobility, and V2X products (OBU, RSU, and communication module) that have been applied in multiple demonstration zones.
Since its founding in 1994, Wanji has been dedicated to the R&D and manufacturing of Intelligent Transport System (ITS), currently listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The company has 4 major product lines for roadside applications including LiDAR, Weight-in-motion, ETC and V2X.
Founded in 2000, China Transinfo develops products and solutions for intelligent transportation and intelligent security serving smart city construction. As a traditional ITS player, it is one of the earliest taking V2X as a strategic direction and currently provides LTE-V2X based OBU and RSU.
Nebula Link aims to provide key technologies and services to intelligent and connected vehicles, new generation ITS and CVIS fields. Major products include T-station, V-box, V2X Protocol Stack Software and X-cloud.
Huali Tec provides hardware and software solutions for V2X and intelligent transportation dedicated to scenarios like urban smart signal light, intelligent highway/expressway, V2X demonstration zones, etc.
CiDi was mentioned in an earlier post as a smart mining solution provider. Besides that, CiDi has also developed 3 V2X solutions for specific scenarios: autonomous trucks for highway, autonomous buses for urban roads, and vehicle platooning.
China Automotive Engineering Research Institute Co., Ltd (CAERI) is a first-class national institute as well as a publicly listed company. It is mainly engaged in the technical service for automobile and manufacturing operations of automobile industrialization. CAERI just won the lead role in a project from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to deploy V2X infrastructures in main areas of Chongqing city.
Beijing TransMicrowave Technology Co., Ltd. specializes in civil microwave radar technology with its independent R&D center and manufacturing base. The company’s products have been widely used in intelligent transportataion.
Nanjing Hurys Intelligence Technology Co., LTD has been focusing on the R&D, manufacture, and applications of civil radars. It provides products and solutions for intelligent transportation, V2X and vehicle security, among which the Radar and Vision Integrated Microwave Detector received 2019 China Intelligent Transportation Product Innovation Award.
E-Hualu is a state-owned enterprise focusing on applying cutting-edge technologies such as IoT, cloud computing, big data and AI to develop Intelligent Transportation, Public Security and Health & Pension solutions. As a leading solution provider and integrators, E-Hualu was awarded titles such as “China Most Influential Enterprises in Smart City” and “China Leading Brands in Smart Traffic”.
Leishen is a leading provider in LiDAR and application solutions. The company’s roadside sensing system combines LiDAR and camera to collect and fuse real-time traffic information, which has been applied in certain pilot zones and V2X demonstration projects.
Huawei has built full coverage around future mobility owning key infrastructure-level technologies, roadside & onboard solutions, and V2X cloud control platform. One of its roadside products is smart street lamp as illustrated in the exhibit below.
China Unicom and ZTE are involved in the V2X sector with Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) services and solutions.
CVIS vendors’ product lines for the roadside
