V2V Mandate Now Unlikely, Impact on Industry Unclear

The latest in a rapid fire sequence of executive orders signed by the new president this week appears likely to kill the proposed mandate for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications in the United States. How this will affect the actual market for the technology remains unclear as of this writing, although it will almost certainly slow adoption.

Issued on January 30, 2017, the new order requires that before any federal agency may enact any new regulation, two existing regulations must be rescinded. In addition to the general ban on new rules, the order also requires that the net incremental cost of any regulations enacted and rescinded must be no greater than zero.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officially published the notice of proposed rulemaking to mandate V2V to the federal register on January 12, 2012. While the proposed regulation is broadly (if not universally) supported in the automotive industry, it nonetheless appears to fall within the scope of the executive order. At this time, there are no clear candidates for regulations to be rescinded if NHTSA wants to proceed with the V2V rule, and it would take time to evaluate which rules to eliminate. That makes it unlikely that the mandate will be enacted under the current administration.

Not Dead Yet

However, even in the absence of a regulation, the industry is still likely to move forward with deployment of V2V and vehicle-to-external (V2X) technologies. General Motors is planning to launch V2V in the next few months on the Cadillac CTS, and supplier Delphi has already begun production of the hardware for this application. Many other automakers and suppliers also support the deployment of V2X communications to enhance drivers’ situational awareness for improved safety.

V2X also provides an important additional layer of real-time information to supplement the line-of-sight data provided by the sensors for automated driving. Most of the automakers and suppliers working on automated driving see the addition of V2X as critical to ensuring the robustness of these systems by providing a means for vehicles, pedestrians, and other participants in the transportation ecosystem to signal intent to each other.

Guidehouse Insights’ Connected Vehicles report projects annual global sales of nearly 70 million light duty vehicles by 2025 with factory installed V2X capability based on dedicated short range communications (DSRC) technology. DSRC was projected to be the primary technology used for V2X in most markets, but in the absence of a US mandate, the adoption rate is now expected to be slower.

Cellular Technologies

There will be significant pressure from communications carriers to utilize cellular technologies in place of Wi-Fi-based DSRC. Currently, 4G LTE technologies are inadequate for the low latency required for V2V applications. New 5G systems are targeted to achieve the same sub-10 ms latency of DSRC but these are still in development with no finalized standards. Broad deployment is not expected until the early 2020s.

Achieving the maximum benefit of V2X communications requires a critical mass of vehicles in use to be equipped. Given the long development lead times in the auto industry and slow turnover of the fleet, these requirements will likely push out the benefits of V2X for several more years into the later 2020s.

If industry leaders in the use and development of DSRC technology (including but not limited to GM, Toyota, Honda, and Delphi) proceed with their deployment plans and see it as a competitive advantage for improving safety, projections of universal adoption on new vehicles may still be met by 2025. However, the only thing certain right now is that we are likely facing a period of much greater uncertainty over the next several years.