Through upgrades of its cloud data platform, the firm has boosted efficiencies and compliance with fluid regulatory dictates.

Vehicle manufacturer SAIC Volkswagen (SVW) runs an Internet of Vehicles (IoV) business featuring a platform that establishes the connection between cars and cars, cars and people, cars and roads through “Cloud, Channel & Device technology”, in-car information services, vehicle control automation, and intelligent transportation.

With the rapid growth of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in recent years, the volume and complexity of vehicle monitoring information needed by the firm has shown an exponential increase. At the same time, regulatory changes have renewed the mandate for NEV monitoring and information sharing, which requires the firm to acquire upgrades in computing power, storage, transmission and application of the data monitoring related to its businesses.

Against this backdrop, SVW in 2022 had upgraded its data platform for further optimization of data storage and operation performance.

    • First, the data platform’s storage efficiency was improved, saving 67% of space usage and greatly improving the operational efficiency of its vehicle data monitoring
    • Second, the total cluster file count was reduced by about 80m, optimizing the original file count by about 75%.
    • In addition, significant performance improvements were realized in the “cardio reporting” and batch operations, with batch job performance increasing by 2.5 times on average, and up to 6.6 times at best.

These performance upgrades ensured that SVW’s vehicle monitoring data chain can be completely stored and analyzed in detail, to fully meet the requirements of national vehicle data management laws and regulations. In addition, based on this data platform, SVW has also built the SAIC Motor application, which offers smarter automobile services to customers, including remote checking of real-time vehicle status, intelligent navigation services, etc. The platform has reached 6m users in less than two years since its launch.

A data pioneer in the auto industry

Xie Cong, Head of Big Data Platform, SVW Database, said the upgrading of the platform was done in just six months, making it one of the first firms in the domestic automotive industry to do so. “The vehicle data monitoring platform we built can easily realize massive data storage and perfect vehicle data monitoring and analysis; and this data will further help us better serve vehicle owners and promote the continuous development of our IoV business.”

According to Wang Gang, Vice President (Greater China), Cloudera, which powers SVW’s cloud data platform: “At a time when the IoV market is evolving rapidly, considerable concern arises about data monitoring and management of intelligent vehicles from the state to the industry. How to store, manage and gain insights from Big Data is important for the development of car companies.”