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Our reporter Chen Yannan reports from Shenyang

"Cities currently have many concerns when promoting vehicle-road-cloud integration, such as differences in technical routes. For example, we feel that the biggest problem is that cities are becoming more and more involved, but car companies are relatively shallow in participation. Vehicle-road-cloud without the participation of car companies has led to shortcomings in industrial functions. At the same time, cities have encountered great resistance in the process of promoting pilot projects, that is, the difficulty of coordination and organization has been reflected in the cross-industry and cross-field pilot projects with cars, roads and clouds." A reporter from China Business News learned at the 4th Shenyang Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference that Zhang Yongwei, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Electric Vehicle 100, shared his thoughts on the integration of vehicle, road and cloud.

How to form a closed business loop and explore a healthy investment and financing model has become the current focus. "It is relatively easy to do a single thing, but it becomes very difficult to do a systematic project. Therefore, in the pilot work, we must solve the gap in understanding of car-road-cloud and the problem of the system and mechanism that needs to be built to promote such a new quality of productivity." Zhang Yongwei said.

Adhere to the basic idea of ​​grading and classification

How to position the car-road cloud? Zhang Yongwei believes that the car-road cloud is the intelligent route in the automotive field, so it is classified into the category of the automotive industry. Such a positioning makes the construction of the car-road cloud have various constraints when exploring investment models and business models. "We try to understand the positioning of the car-road cloud in a broader sense. For example, the car-road cloud is an infrastructure system, which can be called a new infrastructure system. This infrastructure can be linked to different fields. The technical system of the car-road cloud is linked to automobiles, which will form the basic route of the automotive field; the car-road cloud system is linked to transportation, which can empower transportation and form a smart transportation solution with Chinese characteristics; it is linked to urban management, which can also promote the intelligent and digital transformation of urban management."

Zhang Yongwei believes that the attributes of vehicle-road-cloud determine the future investment model. "Vehicle-road-cloud should not be exclusive to automobiles, but should be linked to different fields to support different fields to form solutions supported by vehicle-road-cloud. In this way, the definition of vehicle-road-cloud becomes broader, and automobiles will not be burdened with some infrastructure investment too early. This is also a liberation for the intelligentization of automobiles."

So how should we build this infrastructure system? Zhang Yongwei believes that we should adhere to the basic idea of ​​grading and classification to promote the construction of vehicle-road-cloud integrated facilities.

Zhang Yongwei said: "In the past, construction was mainly based on pilot projects. The most basic requirement for the new round of construction is to achieve full coverage of the city. Construction can be carried out in stages, but the ultimate goal must be full coverage, or even cross-domain interconnection. Single-piece construction is no longer meaningful now. Cities can be built in stages, but there should be a full-area goal, which puts higher requirements on the city's vehicle-road-cloud construction."

"Classification can be carried out during on-site construction. Some places can be built with high configuration and the intersections can be made very smart, but most scenarios can be built with low configuration. If classified construction is carried out, the overall investment will not be too high. If no classification is carried out, a large number of infrastructure construction will be over-configured, but the utilization rate will be too low, which will lay hidden dangers for future development." Zhang Yongwei said.

So how to establish a good investment and financing mechanism? "Where does the money come from? In the past, it mainly relied on the government, with government finances or platform companies investing to bear the cost of car-road-cloud. If large-scale construction is carried out, this model that relies entirely on government funding is definitely unsustainable, so it is necessary to expand investment and financing channels. The basic premise of expansion is to reclassify the investment content." Zhang Yongwei said.

Zhang Yongwei roughly divides the investment in car-road-cloud into three categories: "The first category is infrastructure projects, which should be invested by the government; the second category is the network, and the basic network is the responsibility of the operator; the third category is roadside computing power and intelligent equipment, which can be socially financed."

"In terms of model design, the most successful model in the past was the highway, which borrowed money to build roads and collected tolls to repay the loans. Now the construction of the car-road-cloud infrastructure can also adopt a similar approach. In this way, the investment and financing mechanism of the car-road-cloud can be implemented," said Zhang Yongwei.

Data is the key to sustainable commercial operation of vehicle-road-cloud

So, how can we carry out the large-scale application of vehicle-road-cloud integration? How can we achieve sustainable commercial operation? Zhang Yongwei also gave an answer to this question. "In the past, our misunderstanding was to build high-end infrastructure to serve a very small number of high-level autonomous vehicles. Since there are very few autonomous vehicles, the utilization rate of equipment is low. Therefore, the focus of the pilot application of vehicle-road-cloud is to empower manned cars."

"Therefore, the entire car-road-cloud business model must be based on exploring the application of cars from human-driven vehicles, including the massive number of cars owned in the past. At present, using car-road-cloud to improve travel services has been very popular, especially the empowering experience of car-road-cloud in vehicle driving safety, efficiency improvement, energy consumption reduction, and comfort improvement, which has been welcomed by consumers and drivers. Therefore, if someone uses it, someone will definitely pay for it." He further said.

In addition, Zhang Yongwei emphasized that data is the key to sustainable commercial operation of vehicle-road-cloud integration. "The core of cloud is not just transmission, but also data issues need to be solved. With data, there is a foundation for sustainable commercial operation of vehicle-road-cloud. Therefore, whether it is providing services to the government, providing services to car companies, or empowering traffic management and cities, the key is data. Therefore, whether the vehicle-road-cloud can further gather data through such construction, turn data into assets, and allow data to be mined and operated in a hierarchical and classified manner is the key to achieving commercial returns from vehicle-road-cloud integration."

"In addition, in terms of transportation, the car-road-cloud must empower transportation. To a large extent, this technical system is likely to bring about profound changes in the field of traffic management and form a 'Chinese solution' for smart traffic management," he mentioned.

"If we use the car-road-cloud solution to address the huge pain points in urban management, such as traffic congestion, traffic safety, and parking services, we can solve problems that we have always wanted to solve but have not been able to solve well. This can also accelerate the recognition of car-road-cloud by the whole society," said Zhang Yongwei.

It is worth noting that supporting policies and standards are an important guarantee for the implementation of vehicle-road-cloud integration and its wide-area large-scale application. "To run the road of vehicle-road-cloud integration, policies and standards are crucial. It requires not only national ministries to formulate policies, but more importantly, it is necessary for local governments to promote the innovation of policies, standards and regulations around the numerous scenarios of vehicle-road-cloud, such as public transportation, municipal administration, and high-grade vehicles on the road. Therefore, whether a city can run the road of vehicle-road-cloud, the construction of production relations and institutional innovation is also indispensable. Only by working together can it be stable and long-term in the field of new quality industries." Zhang Yongwei further stated.

(Editor: Zhang Shuo, Reviewer: Tong Haihua, Proofreader: Yan Yuxia)