Two major obstacles to the popularization of V2V: information security and cost

    In 2011, there were 5.3 million car and truck accidents in the United States, injuring more than 2.2 million people and killing more than 32,000 people. Although the traffic accident rate has decreased in recent years due to the development of automobile safety technology, the global automotive industry is still exploring V2V technology to further reduce the traffic accident rate through information sharing.

    In Japan, the United States, and Germany, some test fleets have already started field testing of V2V technology on the road, and the entire automotive industry is optimistic about the prospects of V2V technology. A study by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) shows that after V2V technology is widely installed, it can provide early warning for at least 75% of multi-vehicle collisions.

    In order to understand the current popularity of V2V technology, the U.S. Congress asked the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct an engineering and commercial review of V2V technology. Automakers, parts suppliers, and technology companies are constantly developing in-vehicle hardware and software for interconnection and information transmission with other vehicles, and reducing accident rates by alerting drivers. In a report, the Government Accounting Office pointed out that the challenges of V2V technology include its popularity, cost, and safety factors.

Information Security

    Dave Wise, director of the infrastructure team at the Government Accounting Office, said: "Automotive industry experts believe that V2V systems have few technical challenges. However, because vehicle information transmission relies on wireless networks, there is still a lot of work to be done to protect information security." In addition, he also pointed out that the effectiveness of V2V systems depends on their popularity, drivers' response to the technology, and the supporting collision avoidance technology of V2V systems.

    The U.S. Department of Transportation believes that when all domestic vehicles are equipped with V2V systems, the benefits of this technology will be maximized. However, the current situation is that although the U.S. Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires certain safety technologies to be mandatory in new cars, due to the long life cycle of vehicles, it will take about 20 years to achieve 100% technology popularization. Currently, the only way to quickly popularize V2V equipment is through the aftermarket, that is, buying it at 4S stores. However, few consumers can afford the price of aftermarket equipment, so the popularization of V2V equipment is still a problem.

    Another major factor in achieving real benefits of V2V is the driver's response to the system's warnings. If the system is not mature enough and often broadcasts incorrect warnings, drivers will ignore the warnings over time, even the correct ones. The U.S. Congressional report pointed out that only with the continued penetration of technology and the increasing effectiveness of vehicle-mounted collision avoidance technology can V2V systems become a useful technology.

Technical barriers

    “Some experts point to barriers to V2V adoption including defining the technology and the governance structure of information security systems, addressing privacy concerns, human factors issues and potential liability issues,” Wise said.

    For possible erroneous information in the process of information transmission between vehicles, a security system that can detect, report, and revoke network certificates is needed to protect information security. Before the full deployment of the V2V system, the technical architecture and management structure of the information security system need to be finally improved.

    Some technical experts believe that V2V information security systems are a "huge" challenge. They believe that it is very difficult to build a system that can protect user privacy while providing accurate wireless data transmission. Other professionals point out that the road base stations used to support V2V system information transmission throughout the United States have not yet been scaled up.

    The U.S. auto industry generally believes that there is great uncertainty about who is responsible for a collision involving a vehicle equipped with a V2V system. This is because the behavior of the driver in a particular vehicle or the proactive behavior of the system is based on road condition information transmitted by other vehicles. Therefore, once an accident occurs, it is impossible to determine who is responsible.

    Another obstacle is that supporting V2V systems requires various devices to be installed in the car. In addition, the cost of information transmission security systems is even higher. At present, it is still unclear whether the cost of these devices should be borne by consumers, car companies or the government.