China’s 70 Billion Smart Expressway Expected in 2022
Stepping into 2020, the “new infrastructure” has become a national level strategy, which breaks down to 7 major sectors: ultra high voltage, new energy vehicle charging stations, 5G base stations, big data center, AI, the industrial internet, and inter-city transportation.
The Hangshaoyong Smart Expressway is a typical “new infrastructure” project that spans at least 4 out of the 7 sectors. Its construction is scheduled to kick off this month and to be completed in time for the 2022 Asian Games. The project is also a good illustration of Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure System (CVIS), which was discussed in an earlier post as China’s path to autonomous driving.
The expressway is part of Zhejiang province transportation system that connects 3 major cities: Hangzhou, Shaoxing, and Ningbo with a total length of 174km. Total investment is currently estimated at RMB 70.7 billion.
Here are some construction highlights:
- Six lanes in each direction that include designated dynamic AV lanes.
- Wired and wireless communication network (DSRC, LTE-V2X and 5G) coverage throughout the highway. When travelling at 120km/h, the communication delay is less than 10 ms.
- All kinds of sensors deployed along the road for traffic monitoring, event detection, weather/road condition reporting as well as RSU for V2I communications.
- Satellite communication network built to cover roads and tunnels to enable HD localization and HD map.
- Charging solutions including wireless charging and solar power to fully support EVs for the whole journey.
- A cloud control platform on the backend to manage and analyze data, make decisions and provide service powered by cutting edge cloud computing, big data and AI technologies.
- It reserves interface for further smart facilities to be installed in the future.
The expressway is aiming the following in the short term and long term:
The project is of significance in multiple aspects, to name a few:
- Truck platooning could achieve greater energy economy through reduced power consumption of the following vehicles due to reduced air resistance.
- Smart expressway would share with vehicles/drivers road information out of their field of view for advanced reaction. It reduces congestion and traffic collisions to a greater degree resulting in increased road capacity.
However, as a committee member from Shanghai Research Center for Intelligent Connected Vehicle Terminal Engineering Technology has pointed out, there are technological challenges with the Hangshaoyong project:
- Platooning requires real time information sharing among vehicles in the group, which means each vehicle is planning based on information from V2X as well as its sensors. Sensors and V2X fusion is a relatively new area and further R&D efforts are probably needed.
- LTE-V technology and China V2X communication standard have just been tested and validated in October 2019, and the information security standard is still being developed. Thus, the next generation 5G-V2X is in early stage.
- In platooning, how the following vehicles do planning and control accordingly with information from lead vehicle is a blind area.
- The currently available GNSS and RTK technologies could meet the precision of HD localization but delay, refresh frequency and stablility are presenting issues in real cases.
- The maximum deceleration time generated by the current ESC and ESP is still longer than what human drivers can possibly do. It would make platooning risky in emergencies.
Throughout history, innovative technologies always come a long way to eventually transform our life. Despite the challenges surrounding smart expressway, we are taking steps with the Hangshouyong project and industry players are getting the chance to cooperatively test and validate their products, where breakthroughs could be achieved. In the foreseeable future, we can expect vehicles travelling as fast as high-speed trains.
