Qualcomm Partners with Ford in First U.S. Road Tests of Connected Car Technology
October 31 2017 - 9:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Chester Dawson
Qualcomm Inc. said Tuesday it will begin the first road tests in
the U.S. of a connected car technology being developed in
partnership with Ford Motor Co. and a pair of telecom partners, a
project designed to link vehicles to one another and roadside
infrastructure.
The chipmaker said the pilot program will start later this year
on designated public roads near San Diego and allow cars embedded
with cellular modems to communicate with one another and
infrastructure such as traffic signals. It is designed to test
applications in automated driving, accident prevention and improved
traffic flow as a precursor to commercialization around the turn of
the decade.
"We hope to see some level of deployment in the mid- to
late-2019 time frame," Nakul Duggal, a vice president in charge of
automotive product management at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said
in an interview.
Mr. Duggal said "multiple auto makers" have expressed interest
in observing or joining the testing program.
Car makers have begun to embrace cellular modems as a way to
update their vehicles' increasingly complex software over-the-air.
It also could allow data sharing to update public road conditions,
provide drivers with advanced car diagnostic information and allow
third party providers to market services. But critics worry it
could expose cars to unauthorized data breaches.
The project will use a proprietary chipset made by Qualcomm for
cellular-based connected vehicles, called C-V2X, a longer-range
challenger to an existing Wi-Fi-based standard linking cars that is
known as dedicated short-range communications, or DSRC.
In addition to Ford, which will supply the vehicles, AT&T
Inc. and Nokia Corp. will also participate, along with local
government and other partners, the companies said. AT&T will
provide the cellular network and Nokia will contribute cloud
computing know-how.
"C-V2X provides a reassuring path to technology advancements
necessary to support emerging developments in autonomy, automated
driving, and mobility," Don Butler, Ford's executive director of
connected vehicle and services, said in a statement.
Earlier this year, another C-V2X consortium including Vodaphone
Group PLC, Huawei Technologies Co. and Robert Bosch GmbH announced
trials of similar connected car technology in Europe using vehicles
from Volkswagen AG premium car brand Audi.
Write to Chester Dawson at chester.dawson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 31, 2017 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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