Smart bus industry development overview

1. Market situation of smart bus industry

Under the dual promotion of information technology and national policies, in recent years, Chinese cities have accelerated the process of upgrading and upgrading public transport infrastructure and vehicle equipment, and have achieved significant growth and improvement in bus ownership, passenger volume, operating line distance, intelligent level and information management ability. According to the "13th Five-Year Plan" Development Outline of Urban Public Transport issued by the Ministry of Communications (referred to as the "Outline"), during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, China's urban public transport development has made remarkable achievements, especially since China issued the "Guiding Opinions on the priority development of urban public transport", the construction of urban public transport development policy system has made new breakthroughs, and the urban public service guarantee ability has reached a new level. The quality of urban bus service has been newly improved, and since the beginning, China's smart bus industry has entered a period of rapid development.

At the same time, the number of buses in China still maintains a stable growth. According to the "China Urban Passenger Transport Development Report", from the perspective of urban passenger traffic structure distribution, in 2021 China's urban passenger traffic, the public tram passenger traffic will be 48.916 billion people, accounting for 49.2% of the total passenger transport; The number of cruise taxi passengers was 26.69 billion, accounting for 26.9% of the total passenger transport; The number of passengers on urban rail transit was 23.727 billion, accounting for 23.9% of the total passenger transport. Urban passenger ferries carried 51 million passengers, accounting for 0.05% of the total passenger transport. With the issuance of the "Notice of Green Travel Creation Action Plan" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission of the Ministry of Transport on July 24, 2020, the use of new energy vehicles is an important part of green travel, and the future is expected to usher in a number of new energy bus replacement waves, but also for the installation and upgrading of smart bus products to provide a huge increase.

The number of public buses in a country mainly depends on the total population and urbanization rate. According to historical data, with the increase of the total population and urbanization rate, the number of buses in China has also increased. There is still room for improvement in urban bus demand. With the increase of urbanization rate, the demand for public transport vehicles is increasing year by year.

2. Industry competition pattern

The smart transportation market is relatively dispersed, the industry concentration is low, and the region is strong. The smart transportation projects in various places are mostly implemented by local system integration enterprises, and the vast majority of enterprises are small local system integrators, but they are familiar with the business environment of the region, can quickly feedback the needs of users, and have high stickability interaction with users. Smart bus, as a subdivision of smart transportation, has a small number of professional enterprises, and the overall distribution of the market has a point-like structure, low industry concentration, and strong regional characteristics.

The national smart bus project undertaking, can be divided into: first, mainly specialized in the field of smart bus professional enterprises, including Tianmai Technology, Zhida technology, Blue Taiyuan, Nanjing smart transportation, Sitron technology and Xiamen satellite positioning; Second, large-scale system integrators in the intelligent transportation industry, including Hisense Network, Yi Hualu, Yinjiang Shares, etc.; Third, enterprises in other industries with smart bus business, such as Huawei, Baidu, Inspur Software and Amap, etc. In addition, telecom operators, local planning and design institutes, and local engineers are all project contractors in the smart bus industry.

At present, the listed companies or new third board companies committed to the field of smart public transport in the industry mainly include Tianmai Technology, Sitron Technology, Nanjing smart transportation and Xiamen satellite positioning, etc., while the major market participants in the public transport industry include Qingdao Hisense and Zhida Technology.

3, the development trend of the smart bus industry

As a transportation industry, the overall goal of the development of the smart bus industry should continue to be closer to the needs of residents for convenient travel. At the same time, with the rapid development of high-tech technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, Internet, pure electric, and driverless, it has pointed out the direction for the development of smart bus, which is reflected in the following three aspects:

(1) Driverless technology promotes bus intelligence

V2X, or wireless communication for vehicles, will help cars connect directly to surrounding vehicles, traffic lights, the cloud, and more. V2X can ensure the safe, comfortable, energy efficient and efficient driving of vehicles, which can help prevent 80% of all types of traffic accidents. Because V2X requires high-speed transmission of massive data, based on the characteristics of 5G's large capacity, high speed and low latency, driverless buses can normally use cloud-based artificial intelligence and data, and can "communicate" with various infrastructures on the road, thus improving the reliability and safety of operations.

(2) Experiencalization, sharing and integration of traffic users' consumption needs

In recent years, due to the rapid development of science and technology, the continuous emergence of traffic service models, the rapid spread of the concept of traffic sharing, and greater attention to environmental protection, the consumption demand of traffic users has presented a trend of experience, sharing and integration. The most typical representative is the proposal of travel as a service (MaaS).

MasS is an ecosystem of bus manufacturers, leasing companies, channel operators, finance, leasing, insurance and other multi-party organizations for public travel services. Due to its large capacity and fast characteristics, 5G communication will also accelerate the pace of driverless buses with high efficiency and low cost advantages to enter the MasS platform.

At the same time, the connotation of MaaS is to deeply understand the travel needs of the public, integrate all kinds of transportation modes into a unified service system and platform, so as to make full use of big data decision-making, deploy the best resources, meet the large transportation ecology of travel needs, and provide services with a unified travel service platform (APP). In the future, various transportation modes are only a carrier provider, and there may be specialized information services and planning segments in the future.

(3) Quantification, precision and scientific decision-making of transportation management

In terms of operation management, 5G breaks through the barriers of 4G bandwidth, and through the introduction of artificial intelligence, true unmanned scheduling can be achieved. Through the real-time positioning data of the city's buses and the integration of the city's traffic big data, the reasonable distance and operation plan of the buses can be automatically adjusted, and the operating costs of the bus enterprises are expected to be greatly reduced. In addition, it can also meet the needs of a large number of dry feeder connections and some people's individual travel needs. The demand for big data in different dimensions of the public transport industry is very extensive, including the analysis of job-residence balance at the macro level, the analysis of residents' travel characteristics, and the analysis of public transport mode selection, etc., and the middle level includes the existing planning and optimization, service quality supervision, assessment and evaluation, transfer preferential evaluation, intelligent scheduling and scheduling decisions, etc. The micro level includes driving behavior analysis, vehicle technical performance analysis and evaluation, personalized and accurate travel information service and so on.

5. Industry barriers

In recent years, the smart transportation industry based on the concept of "technology + transportation" has developed rapidly, and with the influx of a large number of enterprises, existing enterprises in the industry have also formed their own barriers. At present, the main barriers in the industry can be divided into: technology and talent barriers, brand and customer barriers, experience barriers, and capital scale barriers.

(1) Technology and talent barriers

Smart bus industry is a technology, knowledge-intensive industry, the business involves computer, data communication, sensing and control and other technical fields, professional, and high requirements for system security and stability. For system development or integration, having the technical ability to effectively integrate software and hardware, and having the corresponding technical personnel to implement system integration projects, is a prerequisite for its participation in market competition. Due to the lack of compound talents with professional technical knowledge and traffic management knowledge in China, and the training of these talents needs a longer period, thus forming a strong industry entry barrier.

(2) Brand and customer barriers

In the smart bus industry, there are usually high requirements for product quality, functions, technical support and after-sales service, so the procurement of related products is generally inclined to choose well-known brands in the industry. At the same time, because the establishment of enterprise brand in the industry requires customers to conduct a long-term investigation of product quality, performance, service and other contents in the process of product use, the establishment of brand status requires a long time accumulation, and the public transport industry has a relatively narrow range of customers, information communication between different regions is more convenient, and the word-of-mouth marketing effect is obvious. Therefore, for new entrants and enterprises that do not attach importance to brand building, it is difficult to rapidly expand market share in a short period of time due to the lack of brand awareness among customers.

(3) Project experience barrier

In the bidding process of the smart bus project, the projects and business performance implemented by the bidder in the past are important indicators for the tenderer to consider, and the accumulation of a large number of project experience is regarded as a guarantee for the timely and high-quality completion of the project. At the same time, enterprises that gain project acceptance opportunities based on previous project experience will continue to maintain first-mover advantages, expand industry influence, and act as a constraint on new entrants.

(4) Capital scale barrier

The implementation cycle of smart bus system integration projects is often long, and the downstream customers are mostly government departments, bus units and system integrators, which usually require a certain account period. At the same time, as a technology, knowledge-intensive industry, the product development stage for a large number of personnel research and development investment also put forward higher requirements for the financial strength of enterprises. Therefore, enterprises in the industry must have a certain financial strength and financing ability, which has become one of the barriers restricting other enterprises to enter the industry.

For more industry information, please refer to PWC's "China's Smart Bus Industry In-depth Research and Investment Prospect Forecast Report 2022-2028". At the same time, PWC Consulting also provides industrial research reports, industry chain consulting, project feasibility reports, 14th Five-Year Plan, BP business plan, industry map, industry planning, blue white paper, IPO fundraising research, IPO working paper consulting and other services.