Envision EnTech Day: Smart Wind Turbines, New Batteries and More

The 2019 Envision Entech Day themed “new machine” was held in Beijing on October 22. Envision Group executives introduced the company’s new machine strategy and delivered keynote speeches about their smart wind turbines, batteries and intelligent IoT operating system. Managers from Envision Virgin Racing Formula E Team, the British motor racing team majority-owned by Envision that competes in the Formula E, also shared their insights into the electric vehicle industry.

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Although generally known as a new energy company, Zhang Lei, Envision’s CEO, prefers to refer to Envision as a tech company. For the moment, Envision AESC, the battery branch of Envision Group, ranks third in China and fifth globally. The company now has R&D centers in Southern Chinese cities of Shanghai and Nanjing, as well as Japan, Germany, Singapore and America. It also has a global wind turbine R&D center in Denmark. In June 2019, Envision was listed among the top ten of the world’s 50 smartest companies by MIT Tech Review.

“The previously individual-based automatic machine has been upgraded into a sensor and algorithm-driven ‘new machine’ with network collaborative intelligence. With the connections of trillions of smart terminals and sensors, machine network becomes the largest artificial intelligence agent, featuring perception, synergy and evolution. From old machines to new machines, it means that machines will evolve from individual intelligence to group intelligence, from efficiency oriented to sustainable development for the human race,” Zhang explained at the conference.

The event coincided with the China Wind Power Conference, during which Envision released their EN-156/3.X series smart wind turbines. Wang Xiaoyu, CTO of Envision, noted that the company’s super-sensing turbine technology includes a mathematical model that combines data collected from the inner mechanism with sensors to reveal the current environmental status. In a word, the turbines are able to sensor their own operating behaviors. This sensor technology also covers future trends, which is the core advantage of Envision’s super-sensing smart technology. State sensoring allows error monitoring, while trend sensoring is reflected in health prevention and active online interventions.

Envision AESC has accumulated 9 years worth of big data in the battery industry, and has also achieved the ultimate safety record of “0” serious accidents among the 480,000 tested electric vehicles. In addition to safety, “our new battery is capable of scenario recognition and achieving energy synergy between different network layers,” said Zhao Weijun, President of AESC China.

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The company’s EnOS™, the intelligent AIoT operating system of Envision, currently manages over 100 GW of energy assets and connects over 60 million smart devices worldwide. EnOS™ enables fast access to different types of machines and helps realize collaborations in the digital world, enabling scenario-driven artificial intelligence algorithms and industrial applications.

Michael Wooldridge, head of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University who also spoke at the event, believes that Envision’s new machine strategy is a new development trend in artificial intelligence. According to him, machines are smart agents, and the interconnections of machines will create cooperation, coordination and negotiation, which forms a social network of machines.

On the evening of the event, Zhang Lei, CEO of Envision, Franz Jung, Chairman of the board of the Formula E team, Sylvain Filippi, Team Managing Director and CTO, as well as other industrial opinion leaders engaged in heated discussions on the future of electric travel. As Zhang pointed out, the fierce competition on the racing track of formula E spurred technological innovations in the company. The Envision Virgin Racing Formula E Team won third place in the 2018/19 FE season. The Virgin Racing Team is the application of the company’s new machine strategy, which integrates the latest technologies in battery, weather forecasting, control algorithms, simulation, and AIoT.