Geely taps Vodafone private 5G for automotive IoT

Vodafone and Geely are proving that you cannot build the future of automotive IoT without private 5G and cloud architectures.

At its core, the updated deal between the partners is all about handing Geely’s European R&D crews the heavy-duty connectivity tools they need, specifically cloud services and Mobile Private Networks (MPNs). The goal is to back their vehicle development while simultaneously rolling out their consumer-focused ‘Internet in the Car’ service across Europe.

Across the continent, Geely Auto Group relies entirely on Geely Technology Europe to drive its research and engineering efforts. The team spends their days building and stress-testing future vehicle platforms, handling the fine details of chassis dynamics alongside the complex software running advanced driver-assistance and infotainment displays.

As you would expect, pulling this off requires an eye-watering amount of data. Just one modern test car can generate terabytes of telemetry, sensor pings, and video data. Engineers are expected to capture, transmit, and analyse all of that almost instantaneously.

Trying to use regular public cellular networks for this is basically impossible. The bandwidth and latency jump around too much, ruining any chance of running reliable, repeatable engineering tests. Plus, security is a massive concern. Nobody wants to risk leaking unreleased car schematics or top-secret autonomous driving code over a public connection.

If Geely wanted to move fast without compromising security, they had to build an incredibly fast, totally isolated network right inside their labs. The obvious answer was a purpose-built private wireless infrastructure.

Building a hybrid edge-cloud for Geely’s automotive IoT

Through this extended partnership, a Vodafone Mobile Private Network is being installed at Geely’s European sites to act as essentially a localised, on-site 5G bubble that never touches standard consumer traffic.

Vodafone’s private network provides the raw speed and zero-lag connection needed to evaluate vehicle-to-everything interactions, execute massive over-the-air updates, and constantly siphon performance logs from the test fleet. Serving as the edge component of their setup, the MPN ensures that urgent data processing happens on-site, entirely avoiding the lag of sending information back-and-forth to a remote data centre.

This edge setup is deeply integrated with a cloud backend. The MPN essentially acts as a secure, high-speed highway to funnel the massive datasets generated during testing straight into a centralised cloud space.

Once the data is in the cloud, Geely’s engineering teams can run heavy machine learning models, perform large-scale analytics on telemetry, run detailed simulations, and manage the entire software lifecycle of their vehicles.

Such tight synergy between the MPN at the edge and the cloud for storage and processing builds a comprehensive platform for automotive R&D. The local MPN handles the immediate need for fast connectivity, while the cloud brings the sheer scale required for deep analysis and long-term storage.

From private 5G labs to global streets with Vodafone IoT connectivity

A distinct but equally important part of this deal has Vodafone handling the connectivity for Geely’s ‘Internet in the Car’ features in production models sold across Europe. 

Vodafone manages this through its global IoT platform, which supplies the necessary SIMs and connectivity management to power customer features like streaming media, navigation, and remote vehicle diagnostics.

This creates a perfectly consistent technology pipeline. The exact same connectivity partner that supports the initial testing phases is also powering the final car on the road. Taking this approach makes managing suppliers much easier and guarantees that solutions proven in a tightly-controlled R&D lab can easily scale up to support hundreds of thousands of cars across different countries.

Vodafone’s IoT platform takes care of all the logistics like international roaming, device management, and billing, which takes a huge weight off the shoulders of Geely’s automotive engineers.

Carmakers are transforming into sophisticated tech and software companies. Today’s vehicle is essentially a connected edge device on wheels, and it demands serious network infrastructure for both its creation and its daily operation.

Giovanni Lanfranchi, CEO at Geely Technology Europe, said: “We’ve moved beyond simple transport solutions. Today, vehicles can be continuously improved through software, with data and connectivity enabling a more responsive and personalised user experience over time.”

By setting up a private 5G network at the edge, automakers secure absolute control over a crucial part of their development pipeline, allowing for much faster and safer testing. Linking that private edge to the cloud then provides the heavy computing power needed to train AI models and crunch data.

Navigating this complex mix of cloud services, on-premise networks, and global connected fleets is now an absolute requirement for any automaker that wants to compete on a technological level.

See also: Nokia and AWS power Tune Talk’s cloud-native 5G network

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