In today's rapidly developing technological landscape, intelligent transportation has become a focal point of public attention. As China's comprehensive solution for advancing intelligent transportation and autonomous driving, vehicle-road-cloud integration is leading the transformation in the transportation sector. This article explores how vehicle-road-cloud integration can build a national intelligent transportation network between cities, and the significance of the policy support and the announcement of pilot application cities.

I. Definition and Industrial Structure of Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration

Vehicle-road-cloud integration is an artificial intelligence network that enables real-time interaction between intelligent agents and the physical world. By integrating devices and technologies such as sensing, computing, and communication, it accurately, quickly, and efficiently collects massive amounts of data and digitizes the real physical world in real-time based on this data. This addresses issues related to the comprehensiveness of information, timeliness of processing, and global decision-making, enabling intelligent agents or terminals to make globally optimal decisions, thereby improving urban traffic efficiency and reducing the incidence of traffic accidents.

Similar to the communications industry, the vehicle-road-cloud integration industry comprises three main roles. The first category includes roadside infrastructure equipment providers, who primarily supply digital roadside base stations to digitize all individuals on the road in real-time. The second category is operators, who provide services to vehicles through roadside infrastructure data. The third category is terminals, which in the transportation sector refers to autonomous driving and intelligent connected vehicles. Domestic enterprises such as Mushroom Car Union participate in all three roles, covering both vehicles and roadside clouds.

II. Core Issues and Solutions of Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration

1. Comprehensiveness of Information

No matter how many sensors an autonomous vehicle is equipped with, there will always be blind spots. Roadside equipment is needed to obtain global information and cover every vehicle to ensure driving safety. Vehicle-road-cloud integration addresses the issue of information comprehensiveness through roadside infrastructure equipment.

2. Timeliness of Processing

In common traffic scenarios, such as highway pile-ups, accident information must be communicated in advance to all approaching vehicles. Roadside infrastructure for vehicle-road-cloud integration has the capability to detect accidents and communicate with vehicles, comprehensively avoiding safety issues caused by information gaps and delays in processing.

3. Global Decision-Making

When a city has a large number of autonomous vehicles, it can enter a state of disorder. Vehicle-road-cloud integration plays the role of a central system for global decision-making and systematic scheduling, addressing traffic efficiency issues. Through collective perception and computation, it achieves intent sharing and collaborative decision-making, finding the optimal solution for individuals within the global optimum.

III. Pilot Cities and Policy Support for Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration

With the development of vehicle-road-cloud integration, more and more cities are beginning to pilot its application. On July 3, 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Ministry of Transport jointly announced the list of pilot cities for the "vehicle-road-cloud integration" application of intelligent connected vehicles. The first batch of pilot cities includes Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Erdos, Shenyang, Changchun, Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Hefei, Fuzhou, Jinan, Wuhan, Shiyan, etc. These cities will become pioneers in vehicle-road-cloud integration technology, exploring replicable and scalable experiences.

To promote the development of vehicle-road-cloud integration, the country has issued a series of policies and standards. For example, the "Action Plan for Making Travel More Convenient with Smart Transportation (2017-2020)" proposed the goal of enhancing the level of intelligence in intercity transportation. In 2021, the "Action Plan for the Construction of New Infrastructure in the Transportation Sector (2021-2025)" further clarified the in-depth application of intelligent transportation management. Additionally, the Ministry of Transport issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Digital Transformation of Highways and Accelerating the Development of Smart Highway Construction," emphasizing the importance of smart transportation in improving the efficiency and quality of transportation services.

IV. Current Technological Advancements and Challenges

1. Data Volume and Computing Power

End-to-end large models significantly contribute to autonomous driving, but the current challenges lie in the volume of data and computing power. China has a new approach to vehicle-road-cloud integration, namely roadside data collection mechanisms. Through calculations and experiments, the data volume of 1,000 kilometers of road is roughly equivalent to the data volume collected by 400,000 Tesla vehicles, compensating for the insufficient data volume on vehicle terminals.

2. Data Richness

Tesla's end-to-end large model has the disadvantage of being tightly bound to vehicle model datasets, requiring separate data training for each vehicle, which presents significant challenges. Roadside data collection can address the issue of vehicle model richness, providing rich data samples from different geographical environments.

3. Business Model

In addition to considering technological maturity, the biggest challenge in implementing vehicle-road-cloud integration is developing a viable business model. Currently, promising markets address issues such as cost reduction, efficiency enhancement, or labor shortages, such as in ports, mining areas, sanitation, and microcirculation shuttle buses. In the future, as the industry develops, most public service vehicles in China's first- and second-tier cities are expected to achieve autonomous driving and vehicle-road-cloud integration.

4. Cost and Profit

Cost reduction is crucial for the development of the autonomous driving industry. China's new energy vehicle intelligent driving systems are expected to become standard, significantly reducing costs. Simultaneously, vehicle-road-cloud integration will not fall into the same development trap as the photovoltaic industry due to its vast executable transportation scenarios and profit margins.

5. Supply Chain Controllability

In the autonomous driving industry, chips have a minimal impact. The real competition between domestic and foreign players focuses on hardware, data, and computing power. Currently, there is a misdirected trend in the pursuit of computing power. As models improve, the demand for computing power will decrease, and the final competition will focus on data. Whoever acquires the richest dataset will hold the key to future competition in the autonomous driving industry.

From a supply chain perspective, although areas such as chips have always been the focus of attention, the requirements for chip manufacturing processes are not as high in autonomous driving. Additionally, cars differ significantly in size from smartphones, so there are no significant differences in the chip sector, allowing for independent development.

V. Path to Building a National Intelligent Transportation Network through Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration

1. Promoting Technological Innovation and Integration

Continuously explore new technologies and solutions to enhance the performance and stability of vehicle-road-cloud integration systems. Strengthen the integration of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and other technologies with the transportation sector to achieve more efficient information collection, processing, and decision-making. Promote the development of communication technologies to improve communication efficiency and reliability between vehicles and roads.

2. Establishing Unified Data Standards and Systems

Develop unified data standards and systems for vehicle-road-cloud integration to ensure interoperability between systems in different cities and enterprises. Unified data formats, communication protocols, and interface standards will provide a foundational guarantee for building a national intelligent transportation network. Simultaneously, strengthen the enforcement and supervision of standards to ensure the healthy development of the industry.

3. Promoting Industrial Collaboration and Cooperation

Vehicle-road-cloud integration involves multiple industrial sectors, requiring collaborative efforts from all parties. Strengthen cooperation within the industrial chain, especially among automotive enterprises, to achieve resource sharing and complementary advantages. Encourage industry-university-research cooperation among enterprises, research institutions, and universities to accelerate technological innovation and talent cultivation. Promote collaborative development among operators, equipment providers, automotive enterprises, and other parties to jointly build a national intelligent transportation network.

VI. Effects of Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration Construction

1. Real-time Digital Twin Network Construction

Vehicle-road-cloud integration intelligentizes relevant equipment and connects to the physical world to construct a real-time digital twin world, effectively promoting the interaction between intelligent society and the physical world. The entire intelligent society will evolve into an integrated system, transitioning from individual intelligent devices to a group intelligent system, solving problems in a unified and systematic manner.

2. Empowering All Vehicles from L0 to L4

Current intelligent vehicles possess intelligent systems, communication capabilities, and computing power, automatically connecting to this network to access real-time information.

3. Enhancing the Feasibility of Autonomous Driving

Vehicle-road-cloud integration collects massive amounts of data, accelerating the optimization of large autonomous driving models and enhancing autonomous driving functionality. It relies on the integration of infrastructure, management, collaboration, and decision-making, requiring a foundational network to support the coverage of large-scale autonomous vehicles.

4. Improving Traffic Safety and Efficiency

Addressing the systemic issues of information comprehensiveness, timeliness of processing, and global decision-making significantly enhances traffic efficiency and safety overall.

5. Enriching Intelligent Terminals

In the long term, the variety of intelligent agents will continue to grow, with drones, robotic dogs, robots, logistics vehicles, security vehicles, and other related intelligent devices quickly integrating into the network. Even smartphones can quickly connect to this network.

VII. Future Prospects of Vehicle-Road-Cloud Integration

As the future direction of intelligent transportation, vehicle-road-cloud integration will bring significant changes to people's travel. With continuous technological advancements and expanding applications, a national intelligent transportation network will gradually take shape. In the future, travel will become more convenient, efficient, and safe. Autonomous vehicles will be widely used in public transportation, logistics and distribution, reducing labor costs and improving transportation efficiency. Intelligent transportation systems will enable real-time monitoring and scheduling, optimizing traffic flow and reducing congestion and accidents. Simultaneously, vehicle-road-cloud integration will drive the intelligent development of cities. The intelligent transportation network will interconnect with other urban infrastructure, enabling information sharing and collaborative decision-making.

Urban management will become more efficient, resource allocation more rational, creating a better living environment for people. In summary, building a national intelligent transportation network between cities through vehicle-road-cloud integration has important practical significance and broad development prospects. By strengthening policy guidance, promoting technological innovation, establishing unified standards, fostering industrial collaboration, and enhancing security measures, we are confident in achieving the goal of constructing a national intelligent transportation network, making greater contributions to the development of China's transportation industry and economic and social progress.