Development of V-to-X systems in North America: The promise, the pitfalls and the prognosis

The development of V-to-X systems in North America is described with a focus on the services and applications that may appear, particularly in the United States. The scope of this article is therefore broad, and while it involves engineering the emphasis is on transportation applications from V-to-X; this dictates consideration of societal and institutional considerations. Different types of over-the-air interfaces are covered, followed by a description of the evolution of the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration program into IntelliDriveSM, and subsequently to the more generic term, connected vehicle next, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle components are covered. The vehicle-to-vehicle section describes an analysis that suggests that the USDOT path toward mandating Dedicated Short Range Communications transceivers on vehicles may be well-founded. Anticipated institutional arrangements in addition to research and deployment ideas for the vehicle and infrastructure are then covered in a section entitled “the short horizon”. Finally, the future of V-to-X in North America is discussed from “the long horizon” view.