After working together for the first time in decades to acquire the HERE mapping company, BMW, Audi and Daimler AG are once again collaborating for another interesting venue. Together with Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm Incorporated the automotive giants are launching the “5G Automotive Association” that will develop, test and promote communications solutions, support standardization and accelerate commercial availability and global market penetration.
The goal of this new endeavor is to address society’s connected mobility and road safety needs with applications such as connected automated driving, ubiquitous access to services and integration into smart cities and intelligent transportation. With next generation 5G mobile networks and continued strong LTE evolution, which includes Cellular Vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communication, the focus of information and communication technologies (ICT) witowards the Internet of Things and the digitalization of industries.
As an evolution to today’s networks, next generation mobile networks are expected to handle much more data volume, connect many more devices, significantly reduce latency and bring new levels of reliability. For example, 5G can better support mission-critical communications for safer driving and will further support enhanced vehicle-to-everything communications and connected mobility solutions.
These new solutions bring new technological and business opportunities for both the automotive and ICT industries, and the members of the association will closely collaborate to realize the full potential together. The association will address key technical and regulatory issues, leveraging next generation mobile networks and integrating vehicle platforms with connectivity, networking and computing solutions.
Through this new association, the companies will be looking to define and harmonize use cases, technical requirements and implementation strategies as well as supporting standardization and regulatory bodies, certification and approval processes. Addressing vehicle-to-everything technology requirements, such as wireless connectivity, security, privacy, authentication and distributed cloud architectures will also play an important role in the scope of the association later down the line.
Christoph Voigt is appointed Chairperson of the Board and Dino Flore is appointed Director General of the Association. The Association will support and work in close cooperation with national and regional initiatives, such as the European Connected & Automated Driving Pre-Deployment Project.
