5G rollout approval promises plenty for auto sector

With the government giving approving the rollout of the 5G spectrum, the automotive sector will be looking to leveraging it for a variety of connected and smart vehicle applications.

Damodar Sahu, Digital Strategist, Manufacturing & Automotive Industries, Wipro, said “With the advancement in Industry 4.0 and IoT (internet of things), the industry is looking forward to the future of connected and autonomous vehicles. The 5G rollout will not only facilitate this but could give rise to  new business models.”

In an official statement on twitter, Ashwini Vaishnav, Union Minister for Telecom Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology, said that when rolled out, the 5G  services are expected to be “10 times more faster than 4G with over 72 GZ of spectrum to be auctioned for a period of 20 years.

 “Spectrum is an integral and necessary part of the entire 5G ecosystem. The upcoming 5G services have the potential to create new age businesses, generate additional revenue for enterprises and provide employment arising from the deployment of innovative use-cases and technologies, “ he said. The cabinet has also decided to enable the development and setting up of Private Captive Networks to spur a new wave of innovations in Industry 4.0 applications such as machine-to-machine communications, IoT,  and Artificial Intelligence across not only the automotive sector but healthcare, agriculture, energy, and other sectors too.

5G will enable additional applications such as autonomous driving, Vehicle-2-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-2-Infrastructure (V2I), Vehicle-2-Network (V2N), and Vehicle-2-Pedestrian (V2P) communications. 5G’s increased throughput, reliability, availability, and lower latency will enable new safety-sensitive applications, which are holistically known as V2V/V2I (V2X, or Vehicle-to-Everything).

Gomathy Padmanabha, head, connected vehicle platform, Tata Elxsi, said, “We are betting heavily on 5G use as it supports connected end-to-end use cases. Especially in the connected car, it brings in the capability of the edge. The moment an edge comes in, the best infrastructure comes into place in a vehicle system that opens up possibilities for many analytics and insights.”

“5G does a lot of things for the machine-to-machine learning,  and smart manufacturing, enabling a lot of the ecosystem that is sitting outside the internet today get integrated into it,” said Minister of state (MoS),  Electronics & Tech Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

According to Gartner, by 2035, 5G will also enable over $1.4 trillion in sales in automotive use sectors like agriculture, mining, construction, and transportation. 

For consumers, V2X supported by 5G, will undoubtedly play an integral role in improving traffic efficiency and reducing collisions. V2V communication, for example, allows vehicles to sense obstacles beyond the line of sight. This could be shared video information between cars as well as between pedestrians and infrastructure. 

Another consultancy, Morgan Stanley believes that 5G technology could save an estimated $500 billion from accident avoidance. It said that 5G V2X will make commuting to work safer, alleviating frustration, and restoring about $2.7 billion worth of once-wasted hours.

As far as autonomous vehicles go, 5G will enable them to “know” where parking spots are and identify alternatives to street parking, as well as speeding up traffic and reducing congestion. This could result in a savings of $140 billion from congestion avoidance.

“We will see an increasing number of use cases ranging from connected and affordable healthcare, smart cities and homes, efficient and secure autonomous cars, to robotics, immersive gaming, immersive education and more,” said Jayanta Deb, Chief Technology officer, MG Motors who was part of  Autocar Professional’s vehicle safety conclave held last week.

“ 5G will change the way consumers shop for cars may change as well. Instead of purchasing vehicles strictly for transportation, customers may seek “connected computers on wheels'' with many choosing to avoid buying a vehicle altogether, relying instead on more efficient public transportation and ridesharing,"  said an auto expert.

He said, “ 5G will allow us to leverage the full potential of advanced CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, and Electrified) technologies with artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Self-driving cars use hundreds of sensors to make vehicles faster and smarter and they have a heavy reliance on data.

 “The car of the future is your mobile office. Voice enabled, AI-powered vehicle cockpits will guide sales, marketing, services, and e-commerce activities. The automotive industry is undergoing massive digital transformation. By 2030, cars will be more connected, autonomous, shared, and electric.” said Sahu.

Research by Gartner suggests that by 2023 the automotive industry will represent 53 percent of the total 5G IoT endpoint market in that year. It will be the largest market opportunity for 5G IoT solutions. The report suggest that the leading use case for 5G in the automotive space in 2023 will be embedded connected car modules for commercial and consumer vehicles (19.1 million units, 39 percent market share), followed by fleet telematics devices (5.1million units, 11 percent market share) and in-vehicle toll devices (1.5million devices, 3 percent market share).