Internet of vehicles flourishing in city

Wuxi in East China's Jiangsu province is in the media spotlight by hosting the 2022 World Internet of Things Exposition.

Kicking off on Friday, the three-day event has attracted about 1,000 participants, including experts and industry leaders from home and abroad. Fortune Global 500 enterprises and unicorn companies are showcasing their core technologies and innovations, and have released their new products during the exhibition.

For example, an L4 grey-blue unmanned minibus developed by Wuxi high-tech companies is to make its debut during the meeting. L4 or level 4 autonomous vehicles can drive almost all the time without human control.

The bus has only two rows of seats and one table, without driver's seat, steering wheel, throttle or brake. It can run at a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour.

It can be driven safely and efficiently under a variety of urban traffic conditions. It can achieve stable and green autonomous driving on open roads, expressways, tunnels, traffic jams, rainy and snowy days.

Wuxi, which is famous for the development of the IoT sector, has been speeding up the formation of an internet of vehicles industrial chain over the past few years. IoV is not only an important part of the IoT industrial cluster, but also serves as a crucial link in the construction of a digital Wuxi, officials said.

In 2018, the city launched the first phase of a C-V2X city-level demonstration and application project, and established the national intelligent transportation testing base.

C-V2X, or cellular vehicle-to-everything, refers to a technology that allows vehicles to communicate with the environment around them in real time. It is considered an important supplement to vehicle sensors that enables vehicles, stoplights, traffic signs, cyclists and pedestrian devices to share information about their status, location and next moves.

So far, more than 200,000 users have registered in the system of the C-V2X project in Wuxi. The real-time data enables the system to map the real world into the digital world, and its interface is divided into two areas of statistics and platforms of facilities, data and applications.

The statistics area provides unified operation, maintenance and management of roadside equipment and intelligent-connected vehicles, sharing information for different application platforms via multisource data and analysis.

Wuxi started construction of Nanshan IoV Town, the first of its kind in China, in Xishan district in 2019. The town covers an area of 59 hectares with a total investment of about 12 billion yuan ($1.68 billion).

The first phase of the town finished construction and opened in August.

With an investment of 2.8 billion yuan, it has built an industrial base, a data operation and management center, an exhibition center and a number of high-end technology and urban application scenarios in the sector.

The second phase plans to cover an area of 17 hectares and has a total investment of nearly 5.5 billion yuan. It will focus on the industrialization of IoV high-end equipment and intelligent software companies, and considers the testing requirements of autonomous driving enterprises into its design.

The third phase is scheduled to be established in 2024, and will highlight the research and production of IoV-related enterprises, as well as commercial services themed on automobile culture.

Currently, the IoV town has gathered headquarters and offices of 46 industrial leaders and innovation companies. They include overall solution providers such as Datang Gaohong and Nebula-Link, vehicle testers, multi-access edge computing software and hardware providers like Juefx and MIIVII Technology, and data service providers such as Wisoft Information Technology and Neusoft.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology signed a contract with the Xishan government in 2021 to set up a joint laboratory in the field of IoV and intelligent transportation in the district. The lab will serve as a public service platform nationwide when it is completed.

In the same year, Wuxi became one of the first pilot cities for the coordinated development of national smart city infrastructure and intelligent-connected vehicles.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn