Three necessary stages for the development of the smart parking industry

Zoss Automotive Research Institute released the "2020 Smart Parking Industry Research Report".

The "2020 Smart Parking Industry Research Report" mainly includes the development status and trends of the smart parking industry, relevant policies, standards and plans, the layout of smart parking in major cities, and research on the development of market segments such as multi-story parking garages, smart parking cloud platforms, contactless payment, parking big data, and AVP smart parking services.

Smart parking mainly refers to the use of wireless communications, sensors, video acquisition and transmission, intelligent identification, the Internet of Things, mobile terminals, positioning, maps, contactless payment and other technologies to comprehensively apply to information collection, management, query, reservation and navigation services for urban parking spaces, so as to maximize the utilization of parking space resources, maximize parking lot profits and optimize the parking service experience for car owners.

According to the development level of information technology, smart parking development can be divided into three stages: 1.0 touchless payment and unmanned operation stage; 2.0 intelligent parking space management stage; 3.0 parking lot integrated autonomous valet parking stage. With the progress of China's automobile industry, China's smart parking development is currently in a stage of rapid development from 1.0 to 2.0. Specifically:

Phase 1.0: Continuous upgrading of hardware equipment, setting up of parking lot contactless payment, and realizing unmanned operation and management of parking lots

At present, China's smart parking construction is mainly achieved through upgrading and renovating existing parking lots, such as adding license plate recognition, geomagnetism, high and low video poles, sensors, contactless payment and other system equipment, realizing the collection of single parking lot data information, building a parking management platform, and developing parking APP/public account/applet, etc. At this stage, parking data information is scattered, and only basic functions such as online parking lot query and contactless parking payment can be realized.

At present, there are three main ways to pay for smart parking: one is to scan code to pay; the second is ETC; the third is to use license plate recognition + password-free activation such as Alipay, Cloud QuickPass, WeChat, and banks. Among them, scan code payment is the most common way of paying for parking in China because it is relatively simple to set up and operate. WeChat, Alipay, UnionPay, and many corporate parking apps have all made arrangements.

As one of the expansion modes of ETC smart cities, ETC parking lots have been gradually deployed in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Nanjing, Chengdu, Taiyuan and other provinces/cities in 2020. For example, by the end of 2020, 300 parking lots in Beijing (with a total of about 150,000 parking spaces) have realized ETC payment, covering 24 hospitals, 23 hub stations, 95 commercial complexes, 66 residential communities, 20 scenic parks, etc. in the city. In the parking lots that have realized ETC payment, the monthly ETC transaction volume exceeds 2 million vehicles. In 2021, Beijing plans to gradually support ETC electronic payment for all road parking spaces in the city.

By 2020, nearly 300 parking lots in Zhengzhou's main urban area have supported ETC parking fees, and 86 parking lots (about 13,000 parking spaces) in Dengfeng, a tourist city under its jurisdiction, have completed the installation and operation of the ETC charging system. Dengfeng plans to support ETC parking fees in all 19 scenic spot parking lots, including the Shaolin Scenic Area, by 2021.

At the policy level, in addition to the ETC vehicle-side user promotion policy, on December 23, 2020, the General Office of the Ministry of Transport issued the "Notice on the Pilot Work of ETC Smart Parking City Construction", selecting 27 cities including Beijing as pilot cities and Jiangsu Province as a provincial demonstration area to carry out ETC smart parking pilot work in advance, accelerate the expansion of ETC service functions, promote the application of ETC parking scenarios, and better facilitate public travel. 2021 is expected to be the year of explosive development of ETC parking lots. With the continuous integration of high-position video technology and ETC payment technology, ETC smart parking will develop rapidly.

The Ministry of Transport announced six pilot projects and 27 ETC smart parking pilot cities

Source: Zoss Automotive Research "2020 Smart Parking Industry Research Report"

In addition, the contactless payment method combining parking lot license plate recognition with password-free quick payment has also been deployed by many companies and banks such as WeChat, Alipay, UnionPay, ICBC, and CCB. The main process is that before the first use, the car owner can sign a contract and bind a bank card through the mobile phone or bind the license plate in the parking APP mobile application to activate the contactless payment. When entering and exiting the signed parking lot, the online account will be automatically deducted, without the need to scan the code or pay in cash, so that the vehicle can pass through the exit in seconds.

Source: Alipay

Phase 2.0: Build a city-level smart parking management cloud platform, gradually create a three-level parking guidance system, form and improve parking big data products, and realize advanced functions such as vacant parking space query, dynamic update, and parking space reservation

Based on 1.0, the city-level smart parking management cloud platform system is the core, which carries the functions of integrating dynamic and static data of various districts and counties in the city and multiple parking lots, analyzing and controlling various resources, and providing car owners with various smart parking services other than contactless payment.

Driven by new infrastructure, intelligent technology and favorable policies, major cities have launched city-level smart parking management platforms and accelerated the layout of smart parking projects. According to statistics, as of the end of June 2020, 26 provinces in China have launched 143 city-level smart parking management platforms, and many provinces and cities are in the process of implementing projects.

Construction status of smart parking management cloud platform in some cities

In terms of project model, the city-level smart parking project is mainly led by the local parking authority and invested, constructed or operated in cooperation with enterprises. In addition to traditional parking manufacturers and security companies, the participating enterprises also include parking start-ups, Internet companies, and technology companies.

Take Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and other Internet companies as examples. They have all used their own advantages to layout the smart parking market. For example, Alibaba and Tencent used Alipay and WeChat as the entrances to layout their own parking contactless payment system products; they also launched their own smart parking solutions through their own cloud products.

On June 8, 2020, Alibaba Cloud released a new generation of lightweight unattended parking service solution - Zhiwei Parking System, and also released the City Partner Plan. In 2020, Alibaba Cloud completed the Jincheng Smart Parking Management Platform and Parking Space Renovation Equipment Procurement Project and the Haining China Leather City Digital Transformation Smart Parking Management System & Digital Security Passenger Flow Project; it also undertook the Suzhou High-tech Zone Fengqiao Street Smart Parking Management System Project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2021; in December 2020, Alibaba Cloud Co., Ltd. won the bid for the Tengzhou City-level Smart Parking Integrated Management (Information System) Platform and Intelligent Equipment Installation and Construction Project.

Baidu uses Baidu Maps and Baidu Cloud products as the entrance, and released a smart parking solution in May 2020; and teamed up with Vanke Intime Shanghai to create a "smart parking shopping center" for Shanghai Nanxiang Impression City MEGA, realizing a smart parking system that integrates smart parking and mall navigation.

Major technology companies’ layout in smart parking

Source: Zoss Automotive Research "2020 Smart Parking Industry Research Report"

In addition, under the craze of new infrastructure and smart cities, many smart parking companies were sought after by capital in 2020. For example, in early 2020, "Ting Kaixin" completed a tens of millions of yuan A+ round of financing; Aipark completed four rounds of financing in the second half of 2020; in January 2021, Sunshine Haitian announced the completion of a US$100 million B round of financing from Goldman Sachs and Anchor Equity Partners.

Phase 3.0: Smart cars, smart parking lots, and the integration of parking lots and parking lots continues to move towards autonomous valet parking

Driven by the continuous maturity and development of technologies such as intelligent networking, autonomous driving, V2X, and high-precision maps, smart cars continue to develop. Passenger cars equipped with L2-level assisted driving functions have been mass-produced and are constantly moving towards L3 and L4 autonomous driving breakthroughs. How to achieve full autonomous driving capabilities for L2-level and above smart cars in closed scenes of smart parking lots is a major direction and goal of the development of smart parking. That is, through the coordinated development of parking lots, the AVP (autonomous valet parking) function is realized.

In the past two years, some companies such as smart parking solution providers, Internet giants, car companies and automotive suppliers have actively explored and deployed in this field. AVP is still in the research and development and test demonstration stage. Due to factors such as regulations and technology, it will take some time for fully autonomous parking to be scaled up.