Promoting High-Quality Development of the Industrial Chain · Venture Capital Record | Hai Pingmian: Expert in Data Monetization for Connected Vehicles in the AIoT Era

When data communication occurs between vehicles, people, roads, environments, and platforms, with the vehicle at the core, and when travel ecology is realized around scenarios such as autonomous driving, smart transportation, and smart travel, the Internet of Vehicles, which used to focus on providing in-vehicle information services (Telematics services) and remote information services (TSP services), has entered a fast lane of intelligence and connectivity with the transformation of automotive and internet technologies. It is deeply connected with various links in the industrial chain, such as communication systems, vehicle manufacturing, and terminal usage, ushering in a new era of development opportunities, expanding from passenger vehicles to commercial vehicles, engineering machinery, and even agricultural machinery, covering a larger market. In this process, vehicle equipment has also been redefined, becoming terminals associated with people, environments, and events, as well as ports for data collection, processing, transmission, and usage.

"The digital intelligence of the automotive industry must be centered around data as its core element and important asset. As the scale and complexity of data grow exponentially, its value becomes increasingly prominent, playing an important role in vehicle intelligent management, accident warning, and smart transportation construction." Hai Ping Mian, as a "data expert" in the Internet of Vehicles industry, believes that fully exploring and leveraging data value under compliance will contribute to the healthy and positive development of the entire Internet of Vehicles industry.

Focusing on the AIoT field of movable industrial equipment, moving from the red ocean to the blue ocean.

Jiangsu Hai Ping Mian Data Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Hai Ping Mian") was established in 2017. Like some technology-based startups, the founding of Hai Ping Mian stems from the rich experience of the founding team in data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

In 2018, with the release of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Action Plan for the Development of the Internet of Vehicles (Intelligent Connected Vehicles)" and the arrival of the 5G commercial era in 2019, the Internet of Vehicles industry ushered in a golden age. Hai Ping Mian responded quickly, focusing on capabilities, with "Industrial Internet · Artificial Intelligence" as the main technical direction, covering areas such as edge computing terminals, Internet of Vehicles big data platforms, and AI algorithm models. "Unlike Internet of Vehicles companies that focus on in-vehicle equipment terminals, smart cockpit products, and vehicle-road collaboration, Hai Ping Mian is a blue ocean-type enterprise in the red ocean of the Internet of Vehicles, helping customers achieve intelligent connectivity of global vehicles while ensuring data security and compliance, realizing data asset monetization," said General Manager Shen Xianghong. With a clear positioning, Hai Ping Mian has a clear development direction, achieving commercialization of products such as intelligent terminals, AI models, and blue ocean systems in just a few years, and has established offices in cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu, Weifang, Nanning, and Changsha, forming long-term stable business cooperation with a large number of leading international and domestic industry enterprises and top clients such as John Deere, Dongfeng Motor, Zoomlion, Yuchai Power, and Lovol Heavy Industry. Titles such as "Leading Enterprise" in Chinese agricultural machinery parts, Jiangsu Province's specialized and innovative enterprises, Jiangsu Province's high-tech enterprises, and Nanjing's gazelle enterprises, along with 15 invention patents and 32 software copyright certificates, are proof of its strength.

In 2023, the Nanjing Industrial Development Fund and the Nanjing Talent Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund invested in Hai Ping Mian, investing tens of millions of yuan in the research and development of machine learning models and intelligent terminals, team expansion, and market development, helping the company reach a new height in its industrial development path.

Leverage core capabilities to cover the entire business process, helping to realize data value monetization.

In recent years, the new energy vehicle industry has been booming, and the Internet of Vehicles has been widely applied in the passenger vehicle sector, achieving interconnectivity and collaboration between vehicles, communication, networks, control, and information processing, enhancing user experience. However, some industry insiders believe that compared to passenger vehicle Internet of Vehicles, commercial vehicles have broader prospects.

China's commercial vehicle Internet of Vehicles started relatively late. While passenger vehicles have already moved into the 3.0 stage of "Internet of Everything," commercial vehicles are still in the 2.0 stage of "human-vehicle interaction," and movable industrial equipment such as engineering machinery, agricultural machinery, and cargo vehicles have just achieved the 1.0 "basic connectivity," with market potential waiting to be explored.

"In 2019, we seized the opportunity brought by the introduction of the "Emission Limits and Measurement Methods for Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicles (China Stage VI)" (referred to as the "National VI" standard), which requires new commercial vehicles, engineering machinery, and agricultural machinery to be equipped with remote emission management vehicle terminals. We shifted our business focus to providing efficient and practical IoT solutions for vehicles in these industries. The correct decision opened the key to rapid business growth for the company," said Shen Xianghong. In response to the challenges faced by the commercial vehicle industry, such as compliance with National VI regulations, fleet management, remote diagnostics, remote upgrades, and big data management, Hai Ping Mian has developed intelligent terminals, big data cloud platforms, and AI machine learning platforms, resulting in software and hardware products such as T-BOX terminals, blue ocean Internet of Vehicles systems, SWit model management platforms, and SWin visualization analysis platforms, providing reliable solutions for clients in various industries from the "end," "cloud," and "use" perspectives.

Hai Ping Mian's end, cloud, and use involve three layers: gateway layer, cloud service layer, and device layer. The end, through enhanced computing power and storage, adopts a multi-core architecture to achieve high-frequency data collection and preprocessing on the terminal side, pushing real-time model applications to the edge; the cloud, using open-source big data components from the Hadoop ecosystem, achieves high-concurrency data access, distributed data storage, and massive data querying and analysis; the use, based on the accumulation of artificial intelligence technology and professional knowledge of the Internet of Vehicles, develops data-driven models and management tools for multiple scenarios, helping clients realize the monetization of massive connected data.

Taking the engineering machinery industry as an example, most engineering machinery operates in complex environments, often involving non-standard operations and even unauthorized modifications by users, leading to decreased performance and frequent failures of the sold equipment, complicating after-sales quality assurance. To help clients mitigate risks and reduce waste, Hai Ping Mian collaborates across "end," "cloud," and "use," leveraging the advantages of intelligent terminal position management and data collection analysis to accurately classify vehicle operating conditions and analyze losses. Through high-frequency data collection, time-domain features, and frequency-domain feature extraction, it judges working modes and intensities, achieving one-stop abnormal warning analysis, helping manufacturers control the current status of their products, reduce failures and after-sales risks, and maintain asset safety.

Aim for overseas and future market layout, exploring new possibilities in the industry.

Wang Shuli, General Manager of the Municipal Venture Capital Group, stated when investing in the Hai Ping Mian project: "The annual ownership and new volume of commercial vehicles in China are considerable, and intelligence is in a period of rapid growth. The main manufacturers of commercial vehicles and engine manufacturers have accumulated a large amount of Internet of Vehicles-related data, and the scale is still growing. How to better utilize these data and realize asset monetization with Hai Ping Mian's leading products such as intelligent terminals and machine learning models is a very critical issue." "Currently, our data applications are mainly divided into two parts: one is digitalization, providing solutions through data operations combined with customer business scenarios; the other is intelligence, achieving automatic calibration through one vehicle one measurement via intelligent terminals, adapting to special regions, road sections, and road conditions," said Shen Xianghong. "However, in the long run, we believe that data value can be further integrated with customer experience, marketing scenarios, service enhancement, after-sales management, and precise operations, empowering vehicle manufacturers and main manufacturers to realize greater value. Therefore, we are trying to layout overseas markets in our business; in terms of capabilities, we are combining AI models with GPT to find larger value spaces," Shen Xianghong stated.

As an innovative driving force for the intelligent and connected development of automobiles, it is not surprising that vehicle networking companies are going overseas with the "car". Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in conjunction with the National Standardization Administration, issued the "National Vehicle Networking Industry Standard System Construction Guide (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) (2023 Edition)" (referred to as the "New National Standard"), aiming at international standards and empowering the global development of the automotive industry. It is expected that in the future, vehicle networking products are likely to become an important part of the overseas business ecosystem for commercial vehicles and movable industrial equipment, predicting the market at sea level, planning qualifications, and laying out software and hardware products that adapt to different national standards, hoping to open up overseas markets first. In addition to "going out", there is also "bringing in". In the passenger car sector, following foreign car companies, domestic manufacturers are actively laying out "vehicle machine + GPT", using cutting-edge GPT capabilities to elevate the intelligence of vehicle machines. However, in the commercial vehicle sector, this is still a blank space. "Planning commercial products with civilian product thinking" is undoubtedly a very effective way to enhance competitiveness and improve service experience. Haipingmian hopes to deeply integrate the company's products and technologies with GPT, training more valuable data and content based on underlying data, making it more convenient for customers in aspects such as fault diagnosis and information retrieval. "We may release a small version by the end of this year, inviting customers to experience it, hoping to bring new highlights to the commercial vehicle networking industry," said Shen Xianghong.

Defining product hardware and software collaboration with algorithms to deeply release value.

In the AIoT era, the core concept upheld by Haipingmian is to "define products with algorithms". Starting from vehicle application scenarios, it achieves joint design of algorithms and intelligent hardware, builds a data platform, flexibly deploys algorithms, and meets the urgent demand for intelligence in the AIoT market. Therefore, Haipingmian insists on a development path of "combining software and hardware", focusing on core technological capabilities to make the training and deployment of AI algorithms faster, better, and cheaper, meeting the requirements for large-scale data training and rich algorithm products; at the same time, it focuses on collaborative design and deep integration capabilities of software and hardware, allowing the vehicle networking services and data required by customers to be integrated into the industrial system, maximizing value release and forming a closed loop. "The construction, implementation, and data monetization of AIoT vehicle networking business are very complex, especially in the fields of commercial vehicles and movable industrial equipment, which is an innovation that requires a certain market foundation, rich product ends, unified production, safety, and access standards, etc. Therefore, various challenges will inevitably be encountered during development. However, the opportunity has arrived, and Haipingmian will embrace everything with a broad mind, just like the connotation of the brand, allowing the enterprise to rise continuously and steadily like the sea."

Source: Venture Capital Group

Reviewed by: Xue Yao

Published by: You Yi