It is fairly easy to see these days that any new vehicle that wants to have a serious chance at the market has to have connectivity of some kind. Some cars have a SIM card slot so you can use the entire vehicle as a mobile data hotspot, while others have sat-nav and Bluetooth connectivity with wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. It is even to the point that since smartphones are so prolific that map applications such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, or others can tell you about traffic congestion simply by seeing how fast (or not) connected smartphones are moving on a section of road.
Yet, we still haven’t reached total connectivity with vehicles. However, there is an emerging technology that is already starting to be deployed. At the moment, we’re in the Vehicle-to-Phone stage of communication, with some over the air features if you allow them through your phone or have a wireless connection at home.
The next step is Vehicle-to-Everything, aka V2X, and it comes with a whole slew of exciting and conversely terrifying possibilities. But what exactly does it mean?
V2X In A Nutshell
The most basic definition of V2X technology and communications is that it allows a vehicle to share all of the information from its sensors, built in cameras, internal systems, and other data with everything around it. This could be other vehicles, pedestrians with V2X apps on their phones, road infrastructure, “Smart City” systems, all wirelessly and in real time.
This is meant to create a “rolling network” of cars and trucks that can receive information about traffic and situations ahead and behind. That data could then, for example, cause the sat-nav direct you to an alternate route. This is often called “beyond line of sight” information, and could likely help reduce traffic jams or tailbacks by Smart City infrastructure routing traffic intelligently to the roads and thoroughfares that can handle them.
It is such an important and emerging technology that in 2024 it is valued at roughly $97.2 billion. Within the next decade, by 2034, V2x is expect to cap over $390 billion in market value, and many companies, existing or starting up, are jumping on board to push it forward.
Benefits
Picture your typical morning commute. You’re driving along comfortably, and you know that up ahead, at your turn off, there is a traffic light that seems to take about 45 minutes to change green for half a second. While traffic lights are controlled via computers that have a binary on/off activation using pressure sensors built into the road, what if there was a V2X system in place?
Instead of waiting for a specific timing point, what if that traffic light could be relayed information that there is no cross traffic on the green light, but at the red light the traffic is now 30 cars deep? It could change the lights so that the more dense traffic has the longer green light, easing congestion and allowing for more efficient travel.
While this is just one example of what could be done, there are four major areas that V2X technology is expected to improve the future of vehicles. These are:
- V2V: Vehicle to Vehicle communications, sharing information regarding speed, precise location, direction of travel, occupants in the vehicle, and the like. This information would be securely transmitted in real time to other vehicles, and as assisted driving (radar guided cruise control, Autopilot, and the like) is on the rise, data relayed down connected vehicles about something ahead could help your vehicle prepare to avoid, reroute, or continue.
- V2I: Vehicle to Infrastructure, as already discussed, allows for the vehicle to communicate in both directions with road systems. Traffic lights, road signs, density of traffic, and the like could be analyzed in real time by those road systems to allow for the most efficient and effective use of the road. This would also allow for cities to collect data regarding what infrastructure policies to enact next to benefit road users the most.
- V2P: Vehicle to Pedestrian is perhaps one of the largest benefits, especially as vehicles will need to have automated emergency braking systems as standard in the USA by 2028. This will allow the vehicle to detect pedestrians and other road users that are not in cars, such as cyclists, motorcycle riders, pedestrians in a crosswalk, and the like. By having this information provided in real time, all the time, even if a vehicle’s forward collision avoidance sensors miss a pedestrian, the vehicle could still use the emergency brakes based on V2P data.
- V2N: Vehicle to Network is the only one of these systems actively in vehicles today. This refers to the car using wireless connectivity via your smartphone or a built-in 4G, 5G, or other cellular network connection to communicate. This connection can be with the manufacturer, other systems, and even allow access to the internet as a mobile hotspot. For example, any vehicle that has OnStar has a V2N system, as do Tesla vehicles, although they use home based wireless connectivity or your smartphone primarily for data transmission.
Drawbacks
As with all things wireless and that transmits and receives data, there are drawbacks. These can range from something as simple as environmental interference all the way to hacking and wireless access to your vehicle.
Data Security
The biggest concern is regarding personally identifiable data. While much effort has been put into V2X so far to keep the data as minimally identifiable as possible, the basic fact of connectivity is that any signal transmitting or received has a point of origin, in this case your vehicle. This would likely mean that at the least, the make and model of your vehicle is included, in the interests of connecting with other vehicles from your specific brand of car.
Where this runs into issues is that many cars, especially EVs, are highly interconnected with your smartphone these days. This extends to information tracking, uploading or sharing contacts with the vehicle, and most importantly, allowing for remote unlock and remote “start” (ie pre-warming the batteries in Winter, or getting the AC running in Summer). Since these apps are on your phone, if someone really really wanted to grab that information, they could. It would take a lot of effort, though, so no need to panic yet.
Necessity For Other Vehicles For It To Work
Another drawback of V2X technology is that by its very nature it depends on close contact with other vehicles or infrastructure. As such, it will very likely be limited to deployment in major and moderate cities, where there is enough need for interconnectivity to warrant the expense of installing all the new tech needed. For someone living in a small city or rural town, those are likely to be the last places where V2X will be deployed.
As well, it requires “buy-in” from customers that will allow for those very vehicles with V2X to make it to the road. Many are still very tentative about such deep interconnectivity because of the data security worry listed above, and even right now, as you’re reading this, the ability to remotely unlock vehicles from an app is one of the rising causes of car theft.
Being a new technology and level of connectivity will of course have its rough patches. Much like with how smartphones replaced cell phones, enough customers with enough V2X cars will reach a tipping point and become the norm. We’re about a decade or two away from that at the moment, but it will eventually happen.
“Future Tech” Only
In perhaps the biggest challenge today, V2X is not something that can be retroactively installed into vehicles that were never designed for it. That is why the first install base will be almost exclusively EVs, and vehicles that include it in the future. It will take a decent generation of vehicles being sold for enough cars and trucks to have the ability to form the V2X network, and even then, it will likely be patchy at best at the start.
That said, it is a very forward looking technology, with actual full integration into the “Smart City” idea of complete interconnectivity expected in two or three decades, as municipalities and governments buy in to the idea as well. Once it is up and running, it is also likely that we will have come close to, if not reached, semi-autonomous driving vehicles on a large enough scale that it could take care of all the driving necessary.
That is the real basis of why V2X is being pushed now. Autonomous vehicles are still a ways off, but the very first vestiges of them are starting to creep their way out into the world. There are pilot programs the world over with self-driving cars on prescribed routes, as well as integrations such as Tesla’s Autopilot. They aren’t perfect because they are still working almost exclusively on their onboard sensors and local data.
Imagine, then, what a vehicle with V2X in a network of V2X cars and trucks could do. That is the future, and it’s closer than you might think.
