Half of New Vehicles Will Be V2V-Enabled by 2022: Juniper Research

With members of the U.S. Congress working on bipartisan legislation on connected and autonomous vehicles, an industry news site is predicting a major increase in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology by 2022—with the fifth-generation (5G) wireless protocol emerging as a basic cornerstone for further development.

The timing for the legislation is right, if a new white paper is correct in projecting 35 million V2V-enabled cars on the road by 2022—a stunning 232-fold increase in five years, or a 376% combined annual growth rate—with the technology showing up in half of all new vehicles shipped. The paper, What Vehicle-to-Vehicle will Actually Mean for OEMs, was published by Hampshire, UK-based Juniper Research.

“The research found that, alongside GPS, LiDAR (Light-Detection and Ranging) and road mapping, V2V is one of the critical technologies in delivering autonomous driving systems,” Auto Connected Car News reports. But “in order for V2V to be successful, the research found that OEMs must include cellular connectivity to provide OTA (Over-The-Air) firmware updates,” relying on 5G technology to properly enable the new technologies.

From V2V to V-to-Everything

The language in the Auto Connected Car News post is one measure of the lightning speed with which the research on connected vehicles is moving onto today’s roadways. Recently, V2V (Vehicle to Vehicle) was a brand new acronym. But it’s already giving way to V2X.

“5G will play a pivotal role in the future of V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) communications,” the publication notes. “Low latency, high bandwidth and wide coverage will be the key enablers of new services such as in-vehicle audio streaming and V2I (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure) services, such as safety and weather warnings for drivers. As the complexity of these services increases, Juniper estimates that future automotive technologies, including autonomous systems, could each consume up to one terabyte of data per day.”

The Juniper report echoes one of the main strands of discussion in The Futures of Transportation, the final report of IBTTA’s November, 2016 Transportation Visioning Summit. “The move to automated vehicles is not a choice, it’s a foregone conclusion,” said one Summit participant. “If we can envision what that future state looks like, then we can work backwards and plan a transition to reach that end state, instead of the reactionary mode that we’re looking at right now.”

Another take on that future came from Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who laid out his own future vision in Reuters report earlier this month.

"'What a bunch of barbarians,’” he said, anticipating tomorrow’s reaction to today’s surface transportation technologies. “‘They drove themselves? Are you kidding me? And look at how many died every year and they thought that was acceptable!'"

Interest Across Party Lines

The good news on the autonomous vehicles front is that interest is high in both the House and Senate, and it appears to cross party lines. The Reuters story had Rep. Walden at House Energy and Commerce and Senate Commerce Committee Chair John Thune (R-SD) both talking about forthcoming legislation.

"We're getting very close. I think it's a good package. We've put a lot of work into it,” said Walden, adding that he expected to introduce legislation in the next couple of months with “good bipartisan agreement.” Most important, Walden said, is to “make sure we stay in the lead on the innovation, that there aren't unnecessary roadblocks in the way, balancing that with safety.”

“We’re not there yet but we’re getting closer,” said Thune (R-SD), adding that he’s been working on a proposal with Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).

The U.S. Department of Transportation, meanwhile, expects to release revised guidelines on connected and autonomous vehicles in the next few months. Previously, Republican staffers had circulated a summary of 16 possible legislative proposals that included safety standard exemptions for up to 100,000 autonomous vehicles, since current standards assume that a human driver is responsible for a car’s safe operation.

Now doubt, with developments happening so rapidly that IBTTA is working on the myriad of issues and concerns as it relates to the transportation and tolling.

If you are looking for the latest on highway technology, plan to attend the IBTTA/TRB Joint Symposium on Managed Lanes and AET taking place July 16-18, 2017 in Dallas Texas. 

(Image courtesy of USDOT.)