Sep 27, 2017Ceitec S.A. has announced the sale of 300,000 passive (non-battery-powered) RFID chips for the production of car tags by Q-Free, a Norwegian company that develops intelligent transport systems. The chip will be used, for example, in tags for tolls, parking lots, airports and petrol stations. In total, Ceitec, a public semiconductor company linked to Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTIC), has already sold one million units of the chip, homologated in record time.
"This achievement is the result of our teamwork, dedication and technical competence," Paulo de Tarso Mendes Luna, Ceitec's president, says regarding the value of the company's results. "This was a project completed in a record time of 13 months, which proves the ability and agility of Ceitec in the development of its products—highly complex devices—which usually last for almost twice that amount of time."
Ceitec expects that many Brazilian automobiles are already using the Ceitec chips in stickers glued to windshields, for the purpose of making automatic gate payments. "The sale of the first Ceitec chips for automatic toll systems in São Paulo, and on federal highways granted by ANTT (Brazil's National Land Transport Agency), represents a milestone in introducing a product with 100 percent national development and technology in a market formerly dominated by imported technology " Luna says. "We are confident that this is just the beginning of this product's success trajectory, and are hopeful that we will soon achieve even better results with the use of this device."
The 300,000 chips are part of the contract signed by Ceitec with the first manufacturer of vehicle identification labels—that is, Norwegian multinational Q-Free, one of the world's largest companies in traffic monitoring and control. The chips were delivered and, from now on, monthly deliveries will be made to reach the initially contracted volume of one million semiconductors. "Any other label maker will be able to acquire the vehicle-identification chips from Ceitec," the company explains, "and there is no established exclusivity agreement."
The Brazilian market has approximately 80 million vehicles, with an estimated annual renewal rate of 10 percent, according to Fenabrave (Brazil's National Federation of Vehicle Manufacturers). Of this total, fewer than 10 million vehicles now have a vehicle-identification label like the ones that use Ceitec's chips. In other words, it is a promising market.
Ceitec does not market the final product, such as labels or tags. Rather, the company provides the chips, which provide the necessary intelligence for these tags, and the manufacturers of vehicle-identification tags can then market them to toll operators or directly to end customers. For contractual reasons, Ceitec says it cannot disclose the companies that utilize its chips.
Currently, the State of São Paulo and the federal highways granted by ANTT use the tolling solution with the ARTEFATO SJ5511 radio frequency communication protocol. In addition, the solution can be employed in the point-to-point system on São Paulo highways granted by the São Paulo State Public Transport Regulatory Agency (Artesp), in the Brazil-ID system portals and in most of the nation's malls.
Ceitec's chips can be exported and, according to the company, there are already negotiations for this standard to be adopted in other countries as well. Before the Ceitec chip was available, the tags used in Brazil were based on battery-assisted solutions or an imported passive solution.
The project for this new Ceitec chip began in July 2016 and was developed by a team of 25 professionals. The product with national technology was successfully completed, and more than one million chips have already been sold, just 13 months after the project began.
The Q-Free label with the Ceitec chip was homologated by the Technological Research Institute (IPT) with Artesp and ANTT. "The record term from decision-making to delivery to the market is a strong proof of Ceitec's technical competence and agility," the company says, "since the development of a chip of this complexity normally takes about 24 months."
