How connected cars can combat global gridlock

Driving is set to become safer and more convenient when cars ‘talk’ to each other on the move. And they’re they’re on the way.

General Motors’ recent revelation that it plans to have a ‘semi-autonomous’ car on sale by the end of the decade has shifted car-to-car communication from the realm of Orwellian fantasy to reality.

Most major manufacturers are well advanced with their visions of the cars we’ll be driving in 2020. These feature radio-based vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications integrated into a suite of safety tech such as radar cruise control, blind-spot sensors and reversing cameras to override brakes and steering in an emergency.

As well as enhancing safety features, V2V and V2I communication should help with the efficient management of traffic hot spots. This could become increasingly important if the number of cars on the world’s roads swells from one billion now to four billion by 2050, as forecast by industry experts. Connected cars could also enable more driver personalisation by storing their preferences — such as seating position, favourite radio station and optimised chassis settings — via cloud computing.

Paul Mascarenas, Ford’s chief technical officer, predicts that car-to-car communication will be commonplace “within five to 10 years”, which tallies with GM’s proclamation.

He says: “The first part is connecting your smartphone to the car (Ford does this through its Sync connectivity platform, available in Europe for the first time on the B-Max) then we add features and content to that. The next step is the connected car in terms of car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure. Then, looking out into the future, we have the ‘car connected to the cloud’, as showcased by our Evos concept at last year’s Frankfurt motor show.”

Much of the technology that underpins car-to-car communication — GPS, WiFi, DSRC (dedicated short-range communication) already exists, but there are sizeable hurdles still to be cleared.

Ford has joined seven other car giants — General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Hyundai-Kia, Nissan and Volkswagen — in collaborating with the University of Michigan on a 30-month car communication project that involves 3,000 linked cars on public roads. A similar project was carried out in Germany last year.

The move towards connected cars has also been the catalyst for some cultural changes within motor companies, which are turning to specialist computing and electronics firms to help develop the technology that will underpin the cars of 2020.

“Historically, the car industry has been seen as a bit of a dinosaur (by those industries). We talk about three or four-year development times; those guys talk in terms of days,” says Mascarenas. “Here we are with this vehicle which has got more computing power than anything on display and it isn’t connected. “Most vehicles now contain up to 10 million lines of software code and have more processing capability than most laptops. The vehicle really is the ultimate mobile device.”

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL MASCARENAS, CHIEF TECH OFFICER & VP, FORD RESEARCH & INNOVATION

What’s the advantage of car-to-car communication?

Once you’ve got that connected network of vehicles, you can use the information that’s flowing between them to manage traffic flow and make for a much safer driving experience.

We’ve got some fantastic camera and radar-based systems on our cars today, but the limit on those is basically the same as the limit you have on your eyesight. But when you’ve got this WiFi-based 360deg communication, essentially you can see round corners and cut through fog and other difficult conditions by communicating vehicle position, direction and speed.

Will this new technology render existing cars obsolete?

One of the things I asked for when I spoke at the SEMA [Specialty Equipment Market Association] show in November 2011 was for the aftermarket to work with us so we can develop modules to retrofit vehicles.

Will car companies be comfortable letting their cars communicate with those of rival firms?

The only way it’ll work is if a Ford can talk to a BMW can talk to an Audi. So our strategy is to partner with other OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] and network providers through collaborative research.

Will connected cars change the way we think about driving?

It will provide a whole new experience in terms of the way you interface with your vehicle. All of your personalised settings can be automatically downloaded to a car, from simple things like the type of music you listen to and temperature settings, to more fundamental vehicle things like the way you drive — for example, powertrain and chassis settings.

MATT BURT