Toyota to launch ‘talking’ cars soon

Toyota will soon have its cars talking to each other. The Japanese giant plans to sell vehicles in the US that can talk to each other using short-range wireless technology.

The target to introduce this is in 2021, three years from now. Toyota says that this can prevent a lot of accidents on a daily basis. There is a pending proposal which the US Transportation Department is evaluating for future vehicles to use this new technology.

Toyota is looking at a short-range communications systems in the United States , across most of its product lineup by the mid-2020s. Toyota aims at being the pioneer in this technology and also hopes that other manufacturers will follow and get in this technology in their cars.

Talking vehicles are being tested for more than a decade now, utilize short-range communications to transmit data up to 300 meters.

This includes location, direction and speed which is communicated to other vehicles. This data is broadcast up to 10 times per second to nearby vehicles, which can identify risks and provide warnings to avoid crashes. There are many cases of accidents at intersections in the US and this technology aims to provide a relief there.

Past President Obama had proposed in 2016 regarding this technology and giving automakers at least four years to comply.

The proposal is for all car manufacturers to have a common language and a standardized system, the way we have Bluetooth. Automakers were granted a block of spectrum in 1999 in the 5.9 GHz band for “vehicle-to-vehicle” and “vehicle to infrastructure” communications and have studied the technology for more than a decade, but it has gone largely unused.

This technology has been in use in Japan for the the last three years. More than 100,000 vehicles are using this technology. The US is a big market and certainly will benefit by this. The decision will still take around more than a year to come in.  Other countries are likely to follow and introduce this technology as well. Just like radar based driving, this too will become an important active safety feature.