In September last year, the Wuxi government teamed up with China Mobile, Huawei, the Traffic Management Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology to initiate the city's pilot LTE-V2X project.
A number of juggernauts in the automobile industry such as Audi China, FAW and Zotye Automobile also joined forces for technical tests of LTE-V2X solutions.
V2X is widely considered an integral part of the future intelligent traffic system, and is expected to pave the way for fully autonomous driving.
The China Economic Consulting Corporation predicted in a white paper issued in late August that the scale of the global V2X market will reach 614 billion yuan by 2020, 200 billion of that in China.
The IoV deployment in Wuxi has just epitomized the city's remarkable results in the IoT industry over recent years. Besides transportation, multiple IoT deployments are already in a pilot run in a number of other fields ranging from manufacturing, environmental protection, healthcare, agriculture to education.
One such example is the Hongshan town, China's first IoT town. Situated in the Xinwu district of Wuxi, it is designed as a model for future large-scale IoT applications. According to Wang Jingjian, Party chief of the district, over 10,000 sensors have been set in place in Hongshan, enabling the retrieval of timely data concerning city management in aspects of water conservancy, environmental protection and transportation.
In 2009, Wuxi was designated as the first nationwide hub for IoT development, and since then has been spearheading the fledgling industry.
The city, now home to 2,000-plus IoT companies, saw an output value of more than 243 billion yuan ($35.5 billion) in 2017, accounting for 25 percent of the national total.
 |
|
V2X-capable vehicles park in the Wuxi Taihu International Exposition Center. [Photo by Xiang Wenjian/chinadaily.com.cn] |
 |
|
A V2X-Capable passenger bus is on a trial run in Wuxi on Sept 14. [Photo by Xiang Wenjian/chinadaily.com.cn] |
