What Is V2V?

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) wireless communication can prevent accidents by allowing one vehicle to exchange real-time information about speed, location and direction with other vehicles around it.

Many of today’s cars already come equipped with some advanced safety features, such as blind-spot detection, lane change assist and forward collision detection. These features rely on sensors such as radars, cameras, ultrasonic sensors and lidars to detect objects around the vehicle and either inform the driver of their presence or take actions to avoid collisions, such as automatically braking.

V2V enables another level of safety by allowing two moving vehicles to electronically communicate with each other (up to a range of about 300 meters), even if other objects are blocking line-of-sight. This ability to “see around corners” can be an important safety feature in a variety of common driving scenarios: 

• Two vehicles approaching each other on a blind curve or a blind intersection
• Seeing around a large truck that is in front of the vehicle so it knows it can safely pass
• Instantaneously recognizing that cars ahead are suddenly braking in heavy traffic
• Spotting cars coming out of a driveway or a parking spot
• Alerting the driver that a vehicle up ahead has come to complete stop to make a left turn
• Improving awareness in adverse weather conditions
• Identifying nearby emergency vehicles and moving out of their way

The National Highway Transit Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that equipping every vehicle in the United States with V2V technology could prevent between 400,000 and 600,000 motor vehicle crashes, prevent between 190,000 and 270,000 injuries per year and save between 780 and 1,080 lives.

V2V technology – and the larger category of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) – has not been implemented as quickly as many had hoped, as the industry has wrestled between using a variant of Wi-Fi called Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and using cellular communications as the basis for V2V. As deployment of 5G cellular increases, it creates an opportunity for more widespread use of V2V technology.

The V2V system would deliver warnings to the driver through some combination of visual, tactile and audible alerts. The alerts would include do-not-pass warnings, forward collision warnings and blind spot warnings.

Aptiv was the first to bring V2V technology to market with the introduction of V2V modules using DSRC in the 2017 Cadillac CTS. The Aptiv module is the first FCC-certified commercial product in North America, as well as ISED in Canada and IFT in Mexico. In 2018, Toyota announced it would begin deploying DSRC across its lineup in North America beginning in 2021.

At the CES tech show in 2019, Ford announced it would introduce V2V technology in its cars beginning in 2022 based on C-V2X, which runs on the 5G cellular network and offers lower latency and longer range of 500 meters.

At Aptiv, we have experience with both DSRC and C-V2X and are prepared to seamlessly integrate them into our solutions.