Connected-car tech remains promising and elusive

Automated driving might be another area hindered. Right now, many believe V2X messages could provide important information that can be factored into decisions made by self-driving systems.

Such an application is not yet practical for automated-driving testing in the United States, but it’s already happening in Chinese cities. Information on pedestrians and other road users at intersections can be captured from V2X systems affixed to traffic lights and broadcast to nearby robotaxis. It’s one way China has jumped to the vanguard in terms of connected-car technology.

Beyond robotaxis, China became the first country to establish a national strategy for connecting ordinary cars, according to a white paper published in 2021 by 5G Americas, an industry trade group.

Nearly 90 cities have partnered with local wireless operators there and deployed tens of thousands of roadside units equipped to transmit messages.

Ford Motor Co. said in 2021 it was the first automaker in China to commercially deploy cellular-based V2X technology in production, in both the Ford Explorer and Ford Edge Plus models.

“If you think about the problem that we’re trying to solve, China looked at it and said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea, we can make the highways more intelligent and provide highway-initiated driver assistance for people to be safer,’ ” said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm’s automotive business. “It sounds like something we should go do. Get it done. I don’t know why we’re not able to get out of our own way, frankly.”

Meanwhile, European regulators are moving forward with plans to make automated emergency braking capable of being triggered by V2X-based messages by 2025 in their New Car Assessment Program protocols.

It was not only the FCC decision that stalled developments in the United States. Vehicle-to-vehicle communications have been under development in some form or fashion since RCA pioneered basic technology in the 1950s, and they accelerated in the 1990s. But over the past decade, automakers squabbled with one another regarding the particular method — dedicated short-range communications or cellular — they’d use to transmit the safety messages.

A failure to choose a particular direction left deployments in a vehicular purgatory. If it had been available, messages from the bus near Mount Pleasant, Pa., could have warned the approaching trucks and car of the hazard. Warnings about falling snow and slick roads could have reached the bus before it rounded a curve on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The crash perhaps exemplified both the promise and the fatal cost of delays.

“People are able to respond much more quickly for a situation where a radar-based system or camera-type systems are really challenged,” Robert Molloy, director of the NTSB’s Highway Safety Office, said on this week’s Shift mobility podcast. “The idea of cars talking to each other really solves a lot of problems.”