On February 11, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China issued a notice on adjusting the relevant content of the “Requirements for Access Review of Road Motor Vehicle Products”. For vehicle manufacturers and testing institutions, vehicles with optional ETC devices are required to be tested in accordance with relevant standards.

That is to say, if you purchase a model that applies for admission on July 1, 2020, you can choose the ETC configuration. Those riders who have always wanted to install the original ETC equipment can do so.

So what are the benefits of the original ETC?

I think the most likely benefit is to make payment more transparent. Now many new cars have the function of Internet of Vehicles. OEM manufacturers can connect ETC devices to the Internet of Vehicles to open up the account ecology. Car owners can check ETC consumption at any time through the in-vehicle central control screen. records and balances.

We can even imagine that now many models have opened up the payment ecosystem, then ETC devices can get rid of bank cards in the future, just bind the vehicle payment account.

Another benefit of the original ETC is aesthetics. There are various ETC devices now, but they must be attached to the front windshield, which is unbearable for someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder like me, so I have not installed ETC until now. The original ETC can be completely integrated into the rearview mirror, the original driving recorder and other equipment to achieve hidden installation.

Another point is that although most of the current ETC devices are solar powered, some still have batteries in them, which need to be replaced after 3-5 years, and ETC devices fail as soon as they are removed, and reactivation is very troublesome. ETC goes with the car, and it is very troublesome to sell the car and cancel it. The original ETC can completely avoid these pits, such as using car power to supply power, or designing the battery compartment to be disassembled.

Of course, how to formulate the optional ETC interface standard and whether the equipment charges are unified will be explained in more specific rules later.

In fact, from a technical point of view, the most powerful function of ETC has not yet been released, that is, “Electronic license plate”. If ETC is upgraded from optional to standard in the future, it will assume the function of “electronic license plate”, and then the set car will be invisible – the new car will be activated when the license plate is registered at the DMV, and the code and license plate will be matched and archived; Through the ETC identification device and camera on the road, the system can automatically identify whether the license plate and the ETC code match.

In this way, it is also convenient for relevant departments to realize the effective management of vehicles.

ETC is the trend

According to statistics, China’s car ownership reached 260 million in 2019, and as of December 23, 2019, the total number of ETC users nationwide reached 200 million, which means that only 60 million car owners have not installed ETC, and these 60 million The car is likely to be a new energy rental car, grocery shopping car, etc. for urban travel, and does not require ETC.

As for the ETC deductions and other issues that everyone is worried about, the Ministry of Communications stated that the optimization and commissioning of the national highway network toll collection system has been completed.

Regarding the previous issue of expressway toll bills, all localities will centrally process the expressway toll transaction data of ETC vehicles in January, and the expressway tolls that have been passed in the previous period but not settled will be deducted uniformly to form a monthly statement. ETC customers can check detailed data through SMS, ETC service applet, official account and App, etc., and learn about the deduction of fees in January.

In addition, in order to ensure the reasonable and legal application of ETC, the Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China has also established a national ETC customer service center and opened the 95022 ETC service supervision hotline. In the future, if you encounter various problems related to ETC during travel, you can also solve them in time through the customer service hotline.

In any case, it is also a good thing to include ETC in the range of new car options, and it may even become standard in the future. Just like ESP, in 2019, my country basically realized the standard configuration of new cars, and tire pressure monitoring will also become standard in new cars in 2020.

Some netizens said that the girlfriend of the co-driver should also become the standard configuration. What do you think of this?

Link to this article：Friends who want to install ETC wait, the “original ETC” will come in July!