On 27 November, Yuan Feng, Executive Vice President of Guangzhou Institute of Software Application Technology and Chairman of Zhongke Software Intelligence, shared his views on the close relation between vehicle infrastructure integration (VII) and new infrastructure at the Technology Innovation and Smart City Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

The word "new" means new infrastructure to me. Automakers and self-driving solution providers focus more on vehicles. In recent years, we've come to the realization that autonomous driving should be divided into two pathways: vehicle intelligence and vehicle infrastructure integration (VVI). Well, VVI is closely related to new infrastructure; it must depend on the infrastructure of the whole city.

However, during these past years, we've also realized that the two pathways will co-exist for a long time in the future. For vehicles such as Aion’s cars, it can’t be that they are able to run in Nansha District but unable in Xinjiang Province. The same goes for Pony.ai's self-driving services: it can’t be that it is available in Nansha District but unavailable in other regions. So, I think vehicle intelligence will continue developing and advancing for a long term. 

However, within a certain area, we have also been discussing smart city infrastructure and VVI. There are many roadside infrastructure – and intelligent roadside infrastructure – including traffic lights. An expert mentioned earlier that a smart city is an integrated city. I agree. Whatever field we are working in, everything should be integrated in the end. We should integrate relevant elements in a smart city, i.e., the often-talked-about cars, roads, people, and cloud. With every aspect integrated, we provide an integrated service. It's actually a typical infrastructure service. As for this infrastructure service, VVI is reflected in many areas, for example, logistics vehicles in industrial parks, sweepers, shuttle buses, and end-to-end expressways. In fact, these scenarios of VVI are still specific applications in a limited environment. Of course, I believe VVI will be applied more widely in the future. 

Allow me to briefly introduce you to our team. I am from the Institute of Software of Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS). I came to Guangzhou from Beijing in 2011. We set up Guangzhou Institute of Software Application Technology and incubated enterprises like Zhongke Software Intelligence. We've been cooperating with the government on new infrastructure. I think this is very important. It is actually about integration mentioned earlier. It provides an important support for automakers, companies like Pony.ai, and other stakeholders in the entire smart transportation system. However, many issues need our attention, including how the government plays a key role in it – especially in regulations and policies. For example, Pony.ai provides paid rides in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. There will arise various regulatory issues, including legal issues, policy issues, and management issues. In the end, to address these issues will require infrastructure. This is what our team is working on. We've had a lot of cooperation with GAC before. In Guangzhou, we cooperate with Mr. Zhang from GAC Research Institute on our Intelligent Connected Vehicle Operation Center. Pony.ai is also an important part of this ecosystem. I think the government and third parties of infrastructure play an important role in any place, including Singapore. We hope we can be better run the smart city, including the ecosystem of smart transportation, through multi-party cooperation.

Regarding pain points, I think there are two. The first one is non-technical, which is management and business models. This is actually a common issue in smart city development. For instance, on the issue of 5G, why do we think 5G base stations consume a lot of power? It is because there are not enough application scenarios. If there are enough scenarios, we may think power consumption doesn't matter. It's a chicken-and-egg question. In smart city development, we often come across issues like this. This issue also applies to VVI. If we invest in infrastructure, which is costly, there are not enough application scenarios. However, because we think this is the future, we invest in the construction of infrastructure before considering the support for application scenarios. In terms of smart city, the smart city we talked about is a big integration. It involves different stakeholders, including the government, enterprises, and citizens who enjoy these conveniences. What kind of role does the government play here? In this business model, generally speaking, we need support from the government, which is capable of making long-term investment.

This is the second part of the non-technical pain: business model, which is an often-discussed challenge in building a smart city. How should we design a good business model: How should we design the role of the government? What kind of investment should the government make? What kind of responsibility should the government take? What kind of outcome should the government produce? What do enterprises and citizens gain from this? And what kind of role do they play? I think this is a particularly important proposition. I'm going to dive into it a little deeper. There was an accident involving a Tesla car in Zhengzhou. The driver claimed the car didn't stop after the brakes were hit. Then Tesla also presented its evidence. However, this evidence was produced by the automaker itself. This issue is about the regulatory mode. We think in the future there will be more and more of these challenges. Our government, enterprises, and users should each play our part.

I'll make it simple about the second pain point. As we are a tech team, we often hear people say that technology is not a problem. Sometimes, we would try to argue that technology is actually a problem. When technology has not reached an ideal level, for example, when autonomous driving without human intervention hasn’t been applied long enough, we have to push it step by step and with prudence. At the beginning, a human driver must be seated in the driver's seat. With technological development, however, since we have conducted tests covering millions of kilometers, we can remove the human driver. And we can try to charge fees now. Then, policy management should correspond with technological progress. When technological progress has not reached this stage, other management methods cannot be implemented in accordance. This is why we say technology is also very important. Actually, we are very optimistic about this. Recently, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China approved mixed-driving on the road in six cities on a pilot basis. That's because self-driving technology is constantly improving, and self-driving mileage is ever accumulating. Therefore, we think technology is also an issue.