Automotive

Hyundai wants to broadcast your car's location, direction and speed

Hyundai is planning to start building its proposed V2X system into cars as soon as 2021
Hyundai
Hyundai is planning to start building its proposed V2X system into cars as soon as 2021
Hyundai

Vehicle-to-anything (V2X) systems will allow cars to speak to roadside infrastructure, traffic lights and each other in the name of safety and smooth traffic flow. Hyundai has backed a V2X startup, and plans to begin installing its units in cars as soon as 2021.

Israeli company Autotalks has been developing the ~US$100 V2X units, which "broadcast the car's location, direction and speed up to 10 times per second." Should another car be equipped with a system capable of reading these signals, it would be able to present warnings to drivers when two cars, potentially unable to see each other, are on a collision course. Cars operating on any level of self-driving autonomy will be able to take your actions into account.

This is, of course, a small step toward the fully autonomous world of the future, in which all vehicles will be constantly communicating, allowing them to convoy close together on highways for aerodynamic drag reduction, or to have stop-free intersections where streams of cars will time their passage through the intersection so as to avoid collisions.

The safety benefits for early adopters will be pretty minimal, as few other cars will be running such systems and there's not a ton of compatible roadside infrastructure in place yet. But it'll grow with time, and eventually, Autotalks is aiming to allow connected cars to share data from all their sensors, so that, for example, a hazard that triggers an automatic emergency braking sequence in one car will trigger it simultaneously in the car following behind, without waiting for that car's systems to know about the event ahead.

Still, the question here for today's drivers is this: in a world where drivers are already under harsh scrutiny and frequently hit with heavy fines, will people want to buy cars that constantly broadcast their speed? Improved safety or not, we imagine there are plenty of people who wouldn't exactly jump at the idea.

The following video gives an overview of V2X technology.

Source: Hyundai

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7 comments
Mark Hentz
I am excited to install / have this technology
paul314
I'm sure there will be a rule requiring stalker and police officers without warrants to ignore any broadcasts they might receive. Although the bigger risk is probably accidental or intentional spoofing. Imagine a car on the highway that somehow screws up and decides it's travelling 0 mph in the passing lane, or a concrete abutment that broadcasts a position 5 meters to the left of its actual location...

I hope to see a really long, incredibly thorough rollout of this tech, especially focused on mitigating failure modes.
DavidB
Not for me. This typical safety-at-the-cost-of-privacy balance tips way too far in Big Brother’s direction. YouTube will quickly be flooded with how-to videos for disabling at least the broadcast feature of any such system that makes it into the field in significant numbers.
Koolski
I'm sure this won't be abused by governments, out of control police departments or insurance companies at all!
ChairmanLMAO
@Koolski2 not to mention secret services, gangsters or vindictive ex's. I can see the "authorities" getting first dibs access to this for the purpose of "making the roads safer" and issuing tickets faster than they can print them since it's so cheap now that they won't have to actually be out there. Light those evil photo radars and red light cameras.
LeonC1963
Sorry it's only the speeders and law breakers that have anything to fear so bring it on
MQ
For a fully automated traffic management system this is the easiest no-brainer.
Basically the same as ADS-B in Aircraft, all they transmit is the current location, speed and direction of motion.

If this is a low power system, with "short range" Transmit / receive -eeffective - range there is no real "Privacy Concern". Don't forget that anyone with a very simple Computer dongle can receive aircraft ABS Broadcasts, it really isn't a concern, If you need to be concerned get an "Uber - Incognito" ride (There I just invented a New service "UI") - Hide the data inside a flood of useless metadata.