Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure System (CVIS) and Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Industry in China, 2018

Smart Cars, Intelligent Roads and CVIS Eligible For Fully Autonomous Driving Have Just Begun

Autonomous driving fuses emerging technologies in many industries and produces combinations of new technologies, solutions, and products. The cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) and cooperative vehicle infrastructure systems (CVIS), the two most valued technologies, boomed as expected last year.

Preparing the report brings us back to the development of the personal digital assistant (PDA) and the cell phone industry, and to considering how cellphones become intelligent.

There was a conflict between PDA and PDA cell phones before the iPhone. Palm was the first sought after by numerous PDA enthusiasts who voluntarily wrote evaluation reports and organized fan exchange clubs for the firm, an echo to Tesla today.

Many independent operating system developers and open API-based PDA and cell phone vendors (like Nokia), which were active players in the market, then disappeared. These days some OEMs are either developing operating systems by themselves or open software/hardware interfaces. Emerging car manufacturing forces are mushrooming, just as the herds of cellphone knockoffs did in those years. History does often rhyme.

Without a doubt, car manufacturing differs a lot from the cell phone industry in that its scale and complexity is more than ten times larger, so it is not quite right to draw a full analogy between them.

Apple’s app store model, the 2.5G/3G/4G wireless data networks and the unified smartphone operating systems (with developers reduced to two or three from dozens) served to presage the subsequent success, application and expanded service of the mobile internet. The intelligent vehicle industry is probably going to follow suit.

IT firms that moved into car manufacturing initially made fun of automakers by saying they still lived in “primitive society” in applying IT and they followed the beaten track with such low efficiency - even the most intelligent vehicle still lagged behind the smartphone by generations in terms of connectivity.

The truth is that chip computing, network transmission and infrastructure still fall short of the basic requirements of the automobile industry, and intelligence and connectivity still have not been rolled out on a large scale.

The connected car alone is little more than a “top student” with a high IQ but a low EQ.

Connected cars that can only predict the intentions of other road users without communicating with surroundings, merely act like a “straight-A student”, a low-EQ intellectual performing well on campus (a simple traffic scene) but probably falling flat in society (a complicated traffic scene).

Human drivers can communicate with pedestrians by the expressions in their eyes and their gestures when crossing an intersection with no traffic signals, through which both drivers and pedestrians can determine who will go first. Automated vehicles are however incapable of intentional communication in spite of sensors.

The traffic environment is quite complex and changeable, especially in China where several traffic scenes co-exist under mixed traffic flow. Current automated vehicles have yet to experience so many scenes to travel safely that commercialization of connected cars is faced with high risks.

If they want to understand the intentions of other traffic participants well, connected cars undoubtedly need to communicate with them and surroundings. CVIS and V2X, then, can play a key part. 

Advantages of CVIS

Cooperative vehicle-infrastructure systems (CVIS) can acquire vehicle and road information by use of wireless communication and sensor detection technologies, allowing interaction and data sharing between vehicles, and between vehicles and infrastructure. The system is a good solution to intelligent communication and coordination between vehicles and infrastructure, using system resources in a more efficient way, enabling safer road traffic and reducing traffic jams. CVIS is a new trend for intelligent transportation system (ITS). 
 
CVIS is an interaction that interprets the intentions of traffic participants with great precision. It not only guesses what the car is going to do but also perceives the situation accurately, so that it can make correct judgments.

In addition to interactive capabilities, CVIS can substantially improve the perception of autonomous vehicles. Vision, radar, LiDAR, and other sensors can be mounted on cars and street light poles which evolve into all-in-one signal poles, all-in-one traffic poles, and all-in-one electric alarm poles. The simultaneous perception of cars and road terminals can minimize blind zones and notify the collision out of sight in advance.

Road terminals deliver enough instructions to permit the decision-making of autonomous vehicles, whose complexity will be reduced remarkably and costs much lowered because they need not go through all scenarios. Accordingly, autonomous driving will become commerical earlier than expected.

In addition to the perception and communication facilities at cars and roads, Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China (MOT) is planning to transform roads into intelligent ones and suit them for autonomous driving.

In February 2018, Ministry of Transport issued Notice of MOT’s General Office on Accelerating the Next-Generation National Traffic Control Network and Smart Highway Pilots, proposing to focus on traffic control network and smart roads, involving: (1) digitalization of infrastructure, (2) integrated road transport CVIS, (3) synthetic application of Beidou high-precision positioning, (4) integrated management of road network based on big data, (5) “Internet +” road network integrated services, (6) the new generation of national traffic control network. It is decided in the Notice that smart road trials will accelerate to be carried out in provinces including Beijing, Hebei, Jilin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Henan, and Guangdong.

CVIS has just emerged, while the race in autonomous driving enters its second half.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has been developing for many years. As the advanced stage of ITS, CVIS deals with technologies such as intelligent onboard system technology, intelligent road test technology, and V2X.

Intelligent onboard system technology and automotive intelligent technology have considerable common ground, but perception of the road surface depends in part on the road test unit.

In short, the “smart cars + intelligent roads + CVIS” formula required for fully autonomous driving has just arrived. Despite the fact that the automotive intelligence of giants like Waymo and Tesla is growing mature, they are still a long way from fully autonomous driving. The competition in autonomous driving is ushering in the second half of the race, where infrastructure will be improved and the market space for car manufacturing will be narrowed, while the market of operations, applications and services will be developing apace.

Competitiveness will increasingly emerge from such technical capabilities as chassis control, sensing systems, chips, power batteries, communication systems, artificial intelligence, intelligent roads, CVIS, big data, cloud computing, etc., and cross-industry competition and cooperation will be a constant topic of interest.
 
In the second half, most small- and medium-sized enterprises will have to give in to giants (such as Velodyne) with strong core competencies. It is crucial to choose a reliable technical route, because a variety of embedded LINUXs in the early stage of smartphones vanished long ago; it is very important to define the appropriate product positioning, because core parts suppliers outlive vendors of complete machines; it is vital to keep abreast of the developments in the industry since the complexity and scope of the autonomous driving industry is far beyond imagination and new competitors flock to the industry all the time.

As mentioned above, Tesla, which temporarily is ahead of the others, may not be able to take the lead for a long time. Powerful Huawei, Apple and other giants have not yet exerted themselves utterly, which means the second half of the autonomous driving contest has just kicked off.

- The Chinese Version of this Report is Available on Request.