If someone asks: What industry was the hottest in 2021? That may be vehicle-road coordination.
Ten years ago, in the sci-fi movie "Mechanical Enemy", the fully automatic car driven by Will Smith can accurately identify traffic conditions and adjust the driving state of the car. Ten years later, the new vehicle-road coordination system has made the scenes in science fiction movies a reality. With the development of automotive networking and autonomous driving, the popularity of vehicle-road collaboration has skyrocketed.
From Baidu's open source solution for vehicle-road collaboration to Ali's "smart high-speed" practice; from Tencent's "vehicle-road collaboration" ecological connector value theory, to Huawei's C-V2X chip and the release of Ocean Connect intelligent transportation at the system architecture level Occupying the platform, this track not only attracts domestic giants to compete for the end, but also attracts the attention of the capital circle.
Recently, Nebula Internet, a vehicle-road coordination solution provider, announced that it has completed a B-round financing of nearly 200 million yuan. joint investment. This is the second round of financing that Huituo has received in the past six months. The two rounds of financing totaled more than 500 million yuan.
It cannot be denied that with the increasing popularity of autonomous driving and the spread of digitalization, vehicle-road coordination is becoming more and more important, and vehicle-road coordination solutions are also becoming a must for car manufacturers. But what kind of intelligent blood can a company like Nebula Internet input into autonomous driving? Can vehicle-road coordination become the key point for the breakthrough of autonomous driving?
The first player to follow the wind
On September 7, 2011, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued a notice on the "Project Approval of Key Technology Research Theme Projects of Intelligent Vehicle-Road Collaboration in the Field of Modern Transportation Technology in the 863 Program". This is the first appearance of the concept of "vehicle-road coordination" at the national level. In the next few years, the concept of "vehicle-road coordination" appeared in the laboratory as a scientific research project most of the time.
In 2014, Professor Yao Danya, one of the founders of Cloud Internet, presided over the public demonstration and acceptance site of the National 863 Program "Research on Key Technologies of Intelligent Vehicle-Road Collaboration". After the "863 vehicle-road collaboration" project was officially concluded, the vehicle-road collaboration has also reached the intersection of scientific research and industrialization.
As the earliest follower in the domestic vehicle-road collaboration industry, the establishment of Nebula Internet in 2015 was almost a matter of course.
Today, Xingyun Internet is a high-tech enterprise focusing on the new generation of intelligent transportation system and intelligent networked vehicle technology, providing complete V2X system solutions and software and hardware products. Core products include smart vehicle terminals, collaborative roadside systems, networked cloud platforms, V2X driving safety services, V2X traffic operation optimization, etc.
Relying on accumulated experience and first-generation products, Nebulas completed the deployment of the national intelligent networked vehicle pilot demonstration zone in 2016, which is also the first demonstration zone project in the country. In the same year, Nebula Internet provided networking products and services for the National Smart Vehicle and Smart Transportation (Beijing-Hebei) Demonstration Zone and the Chongqing Smart Vehicle Integrated System Pilot Zone.
According to the data from Qichacha, so far Nebula Internet has received two rounds of financing, namely the completion of the nearly 2.2 billion round B financing led by Huakong Fund on March 1, 2022 and the completion of the round B financing led by Huakong Fund on December 30, 2019. A round of financing co-invested by Tianchuang Capital, Aopeng Capital, Zhemin Investment, Puhua Capital and other investment institutions.
With the implementation of autonomous driving, vehicle-road coordination has contributed a lot. As Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei and other giants have begun to deploy vehicle-road coordination, more people can see the potential of this market, and it has also pushed vehicle-road coordination from behind the scenes to Taiwan. forward.
Competing to enter the game, why is the vehicle-road coordination so "eye-catching"?
The rise of autonomous driving has led to the "popularity" of vehicle-road coordination.
The so-called vehicle-road coordination refers to the use of advanced wireless communication and new-generation Internet technologies to comprehensively implement vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-road dynamic real-time information interaction, and fully realize the effective coordination of vehicles, vehicles and roads, that is, to coordinate vehicles, roads, and people. and real-time traffic dynamic information to realize the interconnection of information.
Returning to the essence, it is actually the data interaction between the "vehicle end" and the "roadside". With the popularization of autonomous driving technology, the attributes of the car will change from a travel tool to a mobile smart space, becoming a mobile phone similar to a mobile phone. Smart hardware, then, the "roadside" end becomes the entrance of traffic and data.
At the same time, vehicle-road collaboration, like autonomous driving, is also a huge cake, and the giants have long been eyeing it.
Baidu officially open-sourced the Apollo vehicle-road collaboration solution as early as the end of 2018, opening Baidu Apollo's technology and services in the field of vehicle-road collaboration to the industry;
Aliyun built a smart high-speed cloud control platform in the same year to provide global control capabilities for vehicle-road collaboration scenarios. At the same time, AutoNavi and Qianxun provide high-precision maps, and Alipay solves high-speed payment scenarios. Coupled with the scenario support of Cainiao Alliance and ET City Brain, Ali has established a "closed" vehicle-road collaboration ecosystem within its own ecosystem;
Starting from its own advantages and characteristics, Tencent deeply analyzed the problems that urgently need to be solved in vehicle-road collaboration, and cooperated with related enterprises in the industry chain as an industrial connector to jointly research and build a vehicle-road collaboration that includes infrastructure, platform services, and business applications . collaborative ecology;
· Huawei released the C-V2X chip in February 2018; released the first commercial C-V2X RSU (Road Side Unit) in June, building a commercially available C-V2X solution; released the OceanConnect intelligent transportation platform in September ; In October, the mobile data center MDC600 was released to enable autonomous driving.
The popularity of the concept of "new infrastructure" has drawn the attention of more industries to vehicle-road collaboration in the segmented field of intelligent transportation. As the track heats up, can vehicle-road coordination become the ultimate hope for autonomous driving?
Going around repeatedly, the difficulty of vehicle-road coordination is difficult to solve
In fact, vehicle-road coordination is not a new concept that has only emerged in recent years. As early as the 1990s, countries such as Japan, the United States and Europe proposed and implemented some solutions. However, there are still many directions that the vehicle-road coordination has not gone through.
"At present, vehicle-road collaboration is still in the stage of collaborative perception, and it will take a few years of development to enter the stage of collaborative decision-making and control, and finally realize vehicle-road integration." At the plenary meeting of the 2020 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, China Highway Society's autonomous driving work Ran Bin, director of the committee, said.
Technically speaking, road traffic consisting of "people-vehicle-road" is a complex system. If we want to truly realize vehicle-road coordination, we must not bypass China's complex road conditions. Due to the high openness of domestic roads, the complexity and variety of vehicle models on the roads, and the existence of uncivilized behaviors such as pedestrians crossing the road and vehicles often changing lanes to overtake other vehicles, it is difficult to realize the implementation of vehicle-road coordination.
In addition, in the vehicle-road coordination scenario, a large number of hardware deployments, such as sensors and radars, must be used. These hardware are placed directly on the road to realize the interaction of driving information, so absolute safety and stability must be guaranteed. This requires companies to be able to provide industrial-level hardware production capabilities and have hardware production capabilities in various subdivided vertical fields, which in turn will wipe out most of the companies that intend to enter the market.
At present, the general standard for vehicle-road coordination has not yet been finalized in China, and it is still in the stage of individual exploration by enterprises. This objectively determines that the exploration of some enterprises will eventually be eliminated by national standards. In order to seize technological advantages and determine industry standards, companies will need to invest a lot of resources in research and development, and the cost concerns brought about by this will also crowd out the living space of some companies.
After entering 2020, the industry has placed a new round of expectations on vehicle-road coordination. Despite the difficulties, the track has begun to recover. Moreover, from a macroeconomic perspective, with the continuous improvement of many technical aspects such as intelligent vehicle systems, intelligent roadside systems, and communication platforms, especially the popularization of 5G, vehicle-road coordination has entered the stage of practice. Obviously, the players of the vehicle-road coordination track have already taken advantage of the wind of the times.
For Xingyun Internet, vehicle-road coordination is not only a "shuffle battle" related to the industry, but also a "joint battle" that tests mutual cooperation. As stated in the white paper, vehicle-road coordination is a challenge to traditional decentralized It is a profound change in traditional transportation technology, and it is also the scientific and technological support of the modern comprehensive transportation system. In a sense, this is also an opportunity for China's autonomous driving and auto industry to overtake on corners.
Source: New Industry Insights