Five years ago, the EU set itself the ambitious goal of halving road deaths by 2030 and eliminating all deaths by 2050. Unfortunately, the statistics have been moving in the wrong direction recently—the figures rose 4% in 2022.
The bloc now averages 42 road deaths per million. This is much higher than comparable non-EU countries, such as the UK (23) and Norway (17). To tackle this problem, the EU has been introducing initiatives, such as digital driver licenses. This aims to ban dangerous drivers from using vehicles across all the member states.
However, there is only so much impact these types of incremental measures can have. If the EU really wants to achieve its target, it may need to be more ambitious and look at how technology can help it achieve its goal. And there are few more ambitious automotive technology projects than V2X.
This initiative has been decades in the making and holds huge potential when it comes to reducing the number of incidents on the road. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the US has estimated that V2X could either eliminate or at least mitigate the severity of 80% of crashes. This solution, which has been described as a ‘digital seat belt, enables vehicles to communicate with other vehicles on the road as well as the highway infrastructure—and this can be used to warn drivers of approaching dangers that they and their vehicle cannot yet see.
Huge potential
The potential benefits of V2X recently prompted major automotive manufacturers to invest in new solutions. Last year Ford announced it had been trialling the use of a V2X solution that would enable vehicles to connect with highway traffic lights. Ford explained that this would help emergency services to reach incidents faster and reduce intersection crashes. It demonstrated the need for this solution by highlighting that, annually, there are approximately 2,000 accidents that involving ambulances in London alone.
While this all sounds great in theory, the reality of achieving broad uptake of V2X across Europe will not be so easy. This is a technology that, despite being devised more than 20 years ago, has failed to achieve mass adoption. The FCC in the US first set aside bandwidth for vehicle manufacturers to use this technology in 1999, and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute did the same in 2008.
This has led some to describe V2X as a Zombie technology that is not dead but not alive either. Its failure to date is based on the fact that it does not yet have the critical mass of users it needs. To draw a comparison, you can look at the success of the navigation tool Google Maps which works well because it draws on data from more than one billion active users per month. Things are changing, however. Momentum is finally starting to build behind V2X technology for several reasons.
Its failure to date is based on the fact that it does not yet have the critical mass of users it need
Greater demand
One key reason why V2X is now moving to the forefront of the automotive industry’s technology agenda is because it also offers a solution to other major global challenges, beyond a reduction in road deaths. This includes climate change. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication will be critical to many transformative transportation initiatives that enable fuel efficiencies. Truck platooning, for instance, allows vehicles to travel closely in convoy, helping to improve aerodynamics, reduce air drag and lower fuel consumption. This one solution has the potential to reduce a vehicle’s carbon emissions by 16%.
As V2X also connects vehicles to the highway infrastructure, it will provide a key traffic flow management solution. In areas of the world experiencing rapid urbanisation, such as in Asia and Africa, this will support the reduction of air pollution and help drive economic growth.
When the EU mandated eCall systems, which allow vehicles to automatically call emergency services in the event of a crash, it also compelled manufacturers to enable vehicle connectivity. As a result, OEMs are now producing vehicles equipped with the technology necessary for V2X—certainly much more so than they were when it was first proposed more than two decades ago.
5G enablement
Another major development that is helping to remove the barriers to V2X enablement is the roll out of 5G connectivity. This could significantly lower the cost of deployments. When V2X technology was first introduced it was based on the Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) standard, which required dedicated (costly) equipment. However, since 2017, a competing standard, Cellular V2X (C-V2X), has emerged. This allows existing 5G cellular technology and hardware to be used instead.
The world’s biggest silicon vendors are also currently developing solutions that will optimise 5G infrastructure. This work includes the development of Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) technology platforms that will provide the fast (and local) information exchange mechanisms required in several V2X use cases.
Due to its high-speed and low-latency, 5G will become the future backbone of V2X. As a result, more and more manufacturers are deploying solutions based on this standard. For instance, it is estimated that 50% of all new cars sold in China will feature C-V2X protocols in 2025.
Next steps
Given rising demand for V2X as a global solution, and a lowering of the deployment cost involved, there is now also growing support for the technology from authorities around the world. This will be needed to lay down the necessary highway infrastructure to make this possible. For example, in Italy, the Torina Smart Road initiative is currently assessing whether this technology can be used to enable smart routing and develop a green light optimal speed advisory system (GLOSA).
However, if the EU wants to increase adoption in its market, there are steps it could take to encourage the development of more applications and use cases. The first would be to push for an agreement on the C-V2X standard. The European safety performance organisation Euro NCAP has warned that uncertainty over V2X standards is affecting investment in Europe.
Euro NCAP highlighted two separate standards that could be deployed in Europe, ITS-G5 and C-V2X. The growing consensus throughout the rest of the world is with C-V2X, however. This is the chosen standard in China and, early this year, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) published its National V2X Deployment Plan which also pushed for the adoption of C-V2X.
Beyond forcing an agreement on the standard, the EU will also want to consider making V2X technology mandatory in all vehicles, as it has with eCall systems. ITS America estimates that, if mandated, it would likely take a minimum of eight years before all models were equipped with V2X, given the development cycles of the OEMs.
If the EU acts soon, however, this may still give OEMs the time to equip enough vehicles in order for this technology to start having an impact before 2030. Whether this will be fast enough to reduce road deaths by halve is unknown, but it would certainly accelerate progress and help the EU get close to its goal of eliminating all deaths by 2050.
About the author: Przemysław Krokosz is Edge and Embedded Technology Expert at Mobica
