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Qualcomm teams with Ford, Panasonic to test connected car technology in Colorado

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Qualcomm is teaming with Panasonic and Ford to conduct the first road tests in North America of its flavor of wireless technology that enables vehicles to automatically communicate with each other while on the road.

The three companies are working with the Colorado Department of Transportation to test Cellular-Vehicle to Everything – known as C-V2X – in limited areas this summer.

Initially, the technology will be tested at select roadways throughout Panasonic’s CityNOW headquarters in Denver. That will be followed by deployment in select areas along the Interstate 70 corridor later in the year.

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“The state of Colorado has been focused on the rapid deployment of connected vehicle technology to advance safety and are encouraged by the progression of C-V2X,” said Michael P. Lewis, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, in a statement.

Direct vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-pedestrian links are considered a key piece of autonomous driving and smart cities efforts.

The technology aims to help avoid collisions, warn drivers of upcoming hazards or pedestrians, better synchronize stoplights, alert drives of available parking and so on.

Cellular-V2X is a relatively new, and it’s wrestling with a W-Fi-based, vehicle-to-vehicle technology standard called Dedicated Short Range Communications, or DSRC, for the top spot in the emerging car-to-car data sharing landscape.

General Motors, Toyota and others support Dedicated Short Range Communications, which is also known as 802.11p. It is deployed today. Proponents contend it is a secure, affordable and proven technology.

DSRC, for example, is used on toll roads to share data wirelessly between the Fast Pass dongle in the car and the tolling station as the vehicle passes by.

Ford, Audi, Nissan and others are working with Qualcomm and its partners on C-V2X, which supporters claim is more reliable, works better at high speeds, has a longer range and delivers data faster than DSRC.

It is also compatible with upcoming, uber-fast 5G networks, which are likely to be tapped to support on-board advanced driver assistance systems such as sensors, cameras and radar.

For the Colorado trials, Panasonic North America will work with Kapsch TrafficCom, which will provide roadside C-V2X devices. Another partner, Ficosa, will supply C-V2X onboard devices to an existing Colorado transportation authority fleet of Ford utility vehicles.

Panasonic’s connected vehicle data platform will collect and distribute the C-V2X data to traffic managers.

“C-V2X is core to Ford’s vision for the future of transportation and we believe strongly in its potential when integrated with Denver’s smart city initiatives,” said Don Butler, Ford’s executive director of connected vehicle platform.

C-V2X field test are currently underway in Germany, France, Korea, China, Japan and the U.S., with widespread deployment forecast as early as 2020, according to Qualcomm.

“Working with the CDOT, Ford, Panasonic, Kapsch TrafficCom and Ficosa allow us to make this step towards early commercialization for C-V2X in a real-world setting at scale,” said Nakul Duggal, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Technologies.

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mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

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