Huawei’s OceanConnect IoV Platform Debuts at CEBIT

Huawei officially rolled out its OceanConnect Internet of Vehicles (IoV) platform, designed to connect vehicles, at this week’s CEBIT convention in Hannover, Germany.

The platform will be developed in cooperation with vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications platforms to help vehicles communicate with each other and their environment — everything ranging from intelligent bikes to the coordination of smart infrastructure.

OceanConnect is linked to a global public cloud architecture, which provides automobile manufacturers access to intelligent services. Huawei claims OceanConnect can support hundreds of millions of connections and millions of high concurrent connections.

In addition, third-party content and applications are integrated into OceanConnect to help build an ecosystem focused on the needs of automobile manufacturers.

By collecting and analyzing data like vehicle conditions and driving behaviors, OceanConnect also creates a digital duplicate of people and vehicles on the cloud.

In addition, the platform can enable smart content distribution and additional service recommendations based on analysis of individual driving behaviors and travel scenarios.

OceanConnect was developed by Huawei’s Cloud Core Network, a unified, open and cloud-based platform that allows for connections using SIM and non-SIM cards and supports connection management.

The platform has already been deployed for Huawei connected car projects and with partners such as FAW Qiming and Zain Saudi Arabia.

OceanConnect supports mainstream Internet of Things (IoT) standards and function implementation, and complies with the JT/T 808 standard in the connected car space.

“The IoV empowers connected vehicles and intelligent services which enables faster digital transformation for the automobile industry,” Ma Haixu, president of Huawei’s cloud core network product line, wrote in a statement. “During this important transition, Huawei is dedicated to building a fully connected, intelligent world that connects people, vehicles, roads, and other things.”

As part of Huawei’s connected vehicle platform, car manufacturers can control core technological and data assets through the basic architecture, and the platform also provides predictive maintenance, advanced driver assistant system (ADAS) analysis and artificial intelligence services such as a personal assistant.

Earlier this year as part of its strategy to monetize the rapidly growing connected car market, Huawei partnered with PSA Group on the DS 7 Crossback, developed on the Huawei OceanConnect platform.

The vehicle has been released in China and Europe, and Huawei has also announced partnerships with China FAW Group and Guangzhou Automobile Group.

The DS 7 Crossback lets customers access services such as connected navigation, natural language voice recognition and a connected service portal through the vehicle’s dashboard screen.

In addition, the vehicle’s maintenance status and the history of journeys and driving styles are also accessible from the customer’s smartphone. Meanwhile, more services for private customers and fleet managers will be added in the future.

— Nathan Eddy is a filmmaker and freelance journalist based in Berlin. Follow him on Twitter @dropdeaded209_LR.