Big Ideas from China

Here again, local innovators are coming up with creative and quirky ideas for enhancing urban existence.
Traffic is a major issue in China, a country where more than 20 million new cars enter the roads each year. One of the most vivid depictions of this was the 50-lane traffic jam on the G4 expressway during Golden Week last October.
The Transit Explore Bus, also dubbed the “tunnel bus” or “straddling bus”, seeks to ease urban traffic congestion and its negative effect on air quality. The electric vehicle, which runs on rails, straddles two-lanes of traffic and stands more than four metres high, enabling vehicles that are lower than two metres to pass freely under it. The bus can carry some 1,400 passengers and travel at speeds of up to 60km per hour through rush-hour traffic. It can be produced faster, more easily and at about one-fifth of the cost of a metro train. Current plans are to launch a prototype in Qinhuangdao, a city on China’s east coast, later this year.
Win Sun, meanwhile, has won plaudits for breaking ground by pioneering 3D printing within the construction industry. It achieved a global first with its 3D-printed homes in 2014, reportedly costing about US$4,800 (Bt168,000) apiece. It has continued to raise the bar ever since by producing bigger and grander high-quality, high-value modular buildings printed from polymer and glass composite materials, including a 1,100sqm villa at Suzhou Industrial Park.
A host of other less visible but equally important technologies are also being advanced as part of China’s policy to develop so-called “smart cities”. Navigant Research estimates $174.4 billion will be spent globally on smart-city projects by 2023 and China will account for a significant portion. For example, more than 500 Chinese cities are looking at developing urban-sensor networks that can be used for a range of purposes from managing traffic to monitoring air quality.
The good news is these developments are not an entirely home-grown affair. There is ample opportunity for foreign businesses to get involved. Current ventures include one between CAS Smart City, a Chinese company, and Sensity Systems, which develops smart sensors and includes GE and Cisco among its investors. So any Thai innovators out there, particularly those based in busy Bangkok, can consider looking at the street in front of your house to try to find the next big idea.