Ceitec, a public company linked to Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC) that operates in the semiconductor segment, has signed a contract with EGR, a public company that manages the toll roads belonging to the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will supply a solution containing vehicle identification chips (model CTC13010).
The agreement establishes commercial clauses and forecast the demand for the acquisition of chips: 110,000 units within a span of 12 months. Ceitec’s product will be used for automatic control of exempted vehicles within the 14 toll plazas controlled by EGR in Rio Grande do Sul. The contract is valid for one year and may be extended. Paulo de Tarso Mendes Luna, Ceitec’s president, and other members of the board, including EGR’s CEO, Nelson Lidio Nunes, and the company’s administrative and financial director, Ney Michelucci, were present at the signing ceremony in Porto Alegre, Rodrigues.
The Ceitec device can be used for the automatic payment of tolls, applied by means of passive tags glued to the windshields of cars. This enables the vehicles to be recognized at automatic toll gates and parking lots.
Since August 2017, Ceitec has predicted that many Brazilian automobiles would already be using Ceitec chips in their toll tags. “The sale of the first Ceitec chips for automatic toll systems in São Paulo, and on federal highways granted by ANTT,” Luna says, “represented a milestone in introducing a product with 100 percent national development and technology in a market formerly dominated by imported technology.”
Approximately 300,000 chips were part of the contract signed by Ceitec. The first vehicle identification label maker was Norwegian multinational firm Q-Free, one of the world’s largest companies in traffic monitoring and control. The chips were delivered, and monthly deliveries have been made since August, to reach the initial contracted volume of one million semiconductors.
According to Ceitec, any label makers will be able to acquire the vehicle identification chips from them, as there is no exclusivity agreement established. The new supply contract with EGR demonstrates Ceitec’s expansion of its marketing, the firm indicates.
The Brazilian market comprises approximately 80 million vehicles, with an estimated annual renewal rate of 10 percent, according to Fenabrave (the National Federation of Vehicle Manufacturers). Of this total, fewer than 10 million vehicles now have an identification label like the ones utilizing the Ceitec chips. In other words, it represents a promising market.
Ceitec does not market the final product, such as labels or tags. Rather, the company provides the chips, which give the necessary intelligence for these tags, and the manufacturers of vehicle identification tags carry out the marketing to the toll operators, or directly to end customers. For contractual reasons, Ceitec says it cannot disclose the companies that use its chips.
Currently, São Paulo and the Brazilian federal highways granted by ANTT use the toll solution with the ARTEFATO SJ5511 RFID protocol. In addition, the solution can be used in the point-to-point system on São Paulo highways granted by the São Paulo State Public Transport Regulatory Agency (Artesp), as well as in Brazil-ID system portals and at most malls throughout the country.
The Ceitec chip, launched in July 2016, was developed by a team of 25 professionals. The project was successfully completed, and more than one million chips have already been sold, a mere 13 months after it began.