Tag: smart city

Connected car: From mobile broadband to genuine V2X

Connected cars are moving fast

Over the past two decades, vehicles have been making increasing use of cellular connectivity for a variety of purposes from pay-as-you-drive insurance and rentals to remote (un)locking and automated emergency calls. Now automobiles are beginning to harness C-V2X – versions of LTE and 5G specifically designed to meet the needs of connected cars.

This report outlines the growing momentum behind V2X connectivity, the various connectivity options and the strategies of leading connected car makers, before providing some forecasts for the growth in connected vehicles between now and 2028. It then considers many of the key use cases, categorising them according to how frequently the vehicle needs to obtain new data from external sources. Finally, the report profiles the efforts of several telcos that have achieved scale in this market, before drawing some conclusions.

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Who is driving the connected car market?

C-V2X connectivity is now being built into vehicles by various Chinese automakers, as well as GM, Ford and Audi, according to the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA), which is a global, cross-industry organisation representing companies from the automotive, technology, and telecommunications sectors.

The 5GAA has described 2023 as “a pivotal year for V2X deployment”, partly because the technology is increasingly being standardised and partly because of the regulatory drivers discussed later in this section.

While cellular connectivity is already used by tens of millions of vehicles worldwide, the deployment of C-V2X is still very nascent.

Direct mode C-V2X clearly depends on the deployment of 5.9GHz modems inside vehicles and in roadside units and other public infrastructure. The latter will need to be densely deployed, as the range of each unit could drop to around 100 metres when buildings are in the way. These roadside units typically employ either an Ethernet cable or a wireless link for backhaul.

As the business case rests primarily on a reduction in congestion and accidents, the rollout of this infrastructure is likely to be funded primarily by general taxation and/or road tolls. Therefore, much of the direct mode infrastructure will probably be deployed and controlled by municipalities and road operators, but this responsibility could be outsourced to telcos. In China, where the government retains close control over both the telecoms and transport sectors, this infrastructure is already widely deployed in some cities.

Increasingly sophisticated roadside units are also becoming available in the rest of the world from specialist companies, such as Applied Information, Askey, Commsignia, Harman Automotive (part of Samsung) and Yunex Traffic. Other vendors supplying road-side unit (RSU) hardware – or software for inclusion on third-party hardware – include Cohda Wireless, Capgemini, Kapsch TrafficCom, Grand-Tek and others. Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers Huawei and ZTE had solutions listed by 5GAA in a 2021 list of RSU suppliers, but Ericsson and Nokia did not, and they may choose to license products from other vendors.

In May 2022, Yunex Traffic, for example, launched the RSU2X, which can use DSRC or C-V2X signals to transmit speed limits, red light notices and wrong-way warnings to the onboard units in automakers’ 2023 model vehicles. The RSU2X can also capture the car’s speed, direction, and location for use by connected safety systems. Yunex says the unit is capable of handling 4,000 message verifications and 130 message signature operations per second. The RSU2X has four times the computing power of Yunex’s previous model.

Yunex Traffic claims its new RSU2X can handle 4,000 messages per second

Source: Yunex Traffic

Some of the latest roadside units, such as Harman Automotive’s Savari StreetWAVE, include support for 5G, as well as C-V2X and DSRC (5.855 to 5.925GHz), Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN.

C-V2X is also being integrated into new vehicles. For example, in September 2022, Autotalks, a fabless semiconductor company based in Israel, said two Chinese automakers had ordered its V2X communication solutions. In the press release, Autotalks said the first V2X-enabled car brand will be launched in China in the second half of 2023, while the other automaker will roll out the V2X-enabled car in both China and Europe starting in early 2024.

“China’s V2X market continues gearing up towards implementation of the government’s ambitious intelligent transportation strategy,” Autotalks said at the time. “All leading automakers, local and global, are expected to start massive deployment of V2X technology in China in the coming years. The market is moving towards massive adoption of V2X as most OEMs are preparing to launch V2X-powered vehicles by 2025.”

Table of contents

  • Executive Summary
  • The road to automated driving
  • Introduction: V2X market momentum
    • Who is driving the market?
    • Regulatory moves on both sides of the Atlantic
  • V2X connectivity options
    • History and background to automotive connectivity
    • Dedicated and localised V2X networks
    • National and wide-area V2X
    • How much data traffic can be expected?
    • The role of private/non-public mobile networks
    • Spectrum considerations
    • Summary of the connectivity options
  • Automakers’ adoption of connectivity
    • Ford aims to monetise connectivity
    • BMW continues to champion connectivity
    • Audi looks to harness 5G
    • Baidu explores V2X for self-driving
    • How many connected vehicles are there?
    • SK Telecom looks skyward
  • Connected vehicle use cases
    • Batch-based use cases
    • Pulse use cases
    • High-frequency use cases
    • Real-time applications
    • Reducing the need for onboard compute
    • Avoiding collisions
  • Telcos connecting vehicles at scale
    • Vodafone Automotive: 5,000 alerts a day
    • AT&T: Serving more than 60 million vehicles
    • Mobile: Delivering the internet of vehicles
  • Conclusions
  • Index

Related research

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Can telcos help cities combat congestion?

Introduction

Part of STL Partners’ (Re)connecting with Consumers stream, this report explores how telcos could support the companies seeking to reinvent how people get around the world’s increasingly congested cities. It looks at the serious problems arising from congestion and the need for a multi-modal approach to urban travel (incorporating ride hailing, public transport, bike and scooter sharing). The report then considers the many challenges facing the new players trying to bring about this multi-modal future, before making creative and constructive suggestions as to how telcos can help address these challenges. Finally, it also outlines how some operators, such as M1 in Singapore, China Mobile and China Telecom, are already playing an enabling role in the personal transportation market.

In particular, the report explores whether telcos can help coordinate the provision of transportation, as well as providing the underlying connectivity that will enable travellers to get information and make bookings on the fly, while allowing the transport providers to monitor their assets.  In many respects, the provision of effective public transportation is a systems integration challenge that requires a wealth of highly accurate real-time information about what is happening across a city.

As explained in the STL Partners report: The Coordination Age: A third age of telecoms, telecoms networks and related services can help people and companies use assets, such as bikes, cars and roads, much more effectively than they have in the past.

This report also builds on other STL research, notably:

The financial and human costs of congestion

After decades of urbanisation, many affluent cities in North America, Europe and East Asia are gridlocked with traffic. In much of the developing world, people continue to migrate to urban centres in search of work, clogging up roads from Bangkok to Bogota. Urbanisation is at its most extreme in East Asia (see Figure 1) where internal migration over the past decade has seen cities across China expanding at breakneck speed.

Figure 1: People have been flocking into cities worldwide for the past five decades

urbanisation rate

Source: The World Bank

The population density in some major economic hubs in the developing world, such as Mumbai, Manila and Lagos, is higher than 10,000 people per square kilometre (see Figure 2), compared with 1,510 people per square kilometre in London. As the UK capital suffers from serious traffic congestion, many cities in the developing world simply do not have enough space to allow the car to be the primary form of transport for their citizens.

In any case, private cars are not a sustainable mode of transport. As well as reducing people’s productivity and quality of life, traffic congestion is damaging air quality and harming human health. Air pollution has become the fourth highest risk factor for premature deaths – one in 10 deaths worldwide is attributable to air pollution exposure, according to the World Bank. Moreover, the bank says the economic burden of pollution is immense for the world and for individual countries. It estimates that ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution alone cost the global economy US$5.7 trillion, or 4.4% of global GDP, in 2016.

Figure 2: Many cities in the developing world are very crowded and cramped

the biggest cities in the world

Source: UN

So where is traffic congestion at its worst? Of the 38 countries covered by the INRIX 2017 Traffic Scorecard, Thailand is top of the list. In Thailand, drivers spend an average of 56 hours in rush hour congestion, ahead of Indonesia (51 hours) and Columbia (49 hours), followed by Venezuela (42), and the U.S. and Russia both with 41 hours (see Figure 3). Among developed nations, U.S. and Russia have the most congested cities in the world.

Intriguingly, sales of cars fell in 2018 for the first time in almost 28 years in rapidly urbanising China, a symptom of both the economic slowdown and the frustration of trying to drive in the country’s congested cities. Traffic jams, parking difficulties and overcrowding on buses and subways are the top three problems for urban commuters in China, according to a 2018 report by think tank Tencent Financial Technology.

Figure 3: The countries where the most time is lost to traffic congestion

time people spend in congestion

Source: NRIX 2017 Traffic Scorecard

INRIX’s data shows that Los Angeles tops the list of the world’s most gridlocked cities, with commuting drivers spending an average of 102 hours in congestion in 2017, followed by Moscow (91 hours), New York (91 hours), San Francisco (79 hours) and Bogota (75 hours).

Figure 4: Most of the most gridlocked cities are in the developed world

cities with highest congestion

Source: NRIX 2017 Traffic Scorecard

 

Contents
  • Executive summary
  • Introduction
  • Disrupting urban travel
    • Similarities with telecoms
  • Bringing about a multi-modal future
    • The Amazon of transportation?
    • Uber’s competitors
    • Takeaways – why one company won’t win
  • The rise of e-bikes and e-scooters
  • The challenges confronting micro-mobility
    • Lack of profitability
    • The maintenance and charging conundrum
    • The threats of vandalism and theft
    • Safety and public order
    • Buying rather than renting
  • How telcos are getting involved
  • Conclusions
Figures
  1. People have been flocking into cities worldwide for the past five decades
  2. Many cities in the developing world are very crowded and cramped
  3. The countries where the most time is lost to traffic congestion
  4. Most of the most gridlocked cities are in the developed world
  5. An overview of the pros and cons of different modes of urban transport
  6. Lime and Bird are clear leaders in the US e-bike and scooter sharing markets
  7. Both Lime and Bird have reported rapid growth in the number of rides
  8. Lime claims using its products is far cheaper than using a private car
  9. Challenges facing providers of shared bikes and scooters
  10. Some Northern European countries have embraced cycling in urban areas
  11. Sales of bikes (including electric-bikes) continue to rise

IoT and blockchain: There’s substance behind the hype

Introduction

There is currently a lot of market speculation about blockchain and its possible use-cases, including how it can be used in the IoT ecosystem.

This short report identifies three different reasons why blockchain is an attractive technology to use in IoT solutions, and how blockchain can help operators move up the IoT value chain by enabling new business models.

This report leverages research from the following recent STL publications:

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The IoT ecosystem is evolving rapidly, and we are moving towards a hyper-connected and automated future…

Blockchain IoT

Source: STL Partners

This future vision won’t be possible unless IoT devices from different networks can share data securely. There are three things that make blockchain an attractive technology to help overcome this challenge and enable IoT ecosystems:

  1. It creates a tamper-proof audit trails
  2. It enables a distributed operating model
  3. It is open-source

Contents:

  • Introduction
  • IoT is not a quick win for operators
  • Can blockchain help?
  • The IoT ecosystem is evolving rapidly…
  • The future vision won’t be possible unless IoT devices from different networks can share data securely
  • Application 1: Enhancing IoT device security
  • Use-case 1: Protecting IoT devices with blockchain and biometric data
  • Use-case 2: Preventing losses in the global freight and logistics industry
  • Application 2: Enabling self-managing device-to-device networks
  • Use-case 1: Enabling device-to-device payments
  • Use-case 2: Granting location-access through smart locks
  • Use-case 3: Enabling the ‘sharing economy’
  • Blockchain is not a silver bullet
  • Blockchain in operator IoT strategies

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