Yes, obviously and I will tell you why. However, many people say that the auto industry needs 5G. Here is something I read about all the time. The fact that everyone says we need, I mean absolutely need 5G for vehicles. I’ll let you in on a secret, you don’t. I am a big … Continue reading Would 5G Help the Auto Industry? →
Yes, obviously and I will tell you why. However, many people say that the auto industry needs 5G. Here is something I read about all the
time. The fact that everyone says we need, I mean absolutely need 5G for vehicles. I’ll let you in on a secret, you don’t. I am a big fan and advocate of 5G, but I want to set the expectation properly.
They are already connected!
Cars are already connected. They can be hacked, and they are already feeding data back to the manufacturer. This is all good because they want to know how to improve the vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, chances are good they could abuse their rights and invade your privacy. The manufacturers won’t because they have too much to lose. They don’t need 5G to do this. They just need a data connection.
They will ask about autonomous cars, you know, self-driving cars. That is being done today as well, ever hear of Google, Lyft, or Uber? They have all tested this successfully. It works today without 5G.
So why would we need 5G? Well, first let’s look at why we don’t need it. Any car should have the smarts to handle the problems on its own. What I mean by that is that the electronics in the vehicle are there for a reason. They are going to provide the data, controls, autonomous driving without any outside help. The idea is that it can work with or without connectivity. Vehicles need to be smart, smarter than your smartphone. They can have the delays in it that your smartphone does. However, they should have a specific task for each thing they do, especially if they are driving for you. It must be alert and quick to respond whether it has a connection or not.
Can’t they just talk to each other?
Next, let’s look at car to car connectivity. I think this is very important because the vehicles can alert each other faster than going through any network. If a vehicle is 200 feet ahead of you has an accident, then it would be great if a mesh system could send a quick alert back from car to car to car until it reaches your vehicle, in minimal time. Again, without the delay of any network. They need to talk to each other to make this work, and it must be quick short data bursts. FYI – I see a hacker having a field day with this, but that is beside the point.
Again, why 5G for the vehicle?
So why the need for 5G? I don’t think we need 5G, just 2 types of remote connections. It would be great to be able to gather the data like we do today. It would be great to feed data to the vehicle, like updated maps, weather, traffic, and so on. This would be nice to do without the aid of a smartphone. However, if your smartphone does it, why pay for the car to be connected?
It would be nice to have your car be a Wi-Fi or LTE-U hotspot, again, your smartphone can do this, at least the Wi-Fi part today.
I think the IOT play is huge here for the gathering of data and the updating of vehicles. It would have to be very low latency to have the vehicle send back real-time data, in case of an accident. It could alert the authorities if there is an accident in real time and send back a real-time damage report. You know, if someone is hurt, where they are at, and any other alarms that are available.