DSRC: Fade to Black

The last refuge of a fading technology is a government mandate. That is what the supplier eco-system dedicated to dedicated short range communications (DSRC) technology for cars continues to cling to - a much-hoped-for mandate from The U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

DSRC technology, which never had the support of organic market demand, let alone consumer awareness, has spent more than 19 years in the oven yet still appears to be half-baked. DSRC was meant to enable vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-predestrian communications in order to enable robust collision avoidance systems while unlocking a vast array of value-added applications from intersection management to software updates.

Most of the applications originally envisioned for DSRC have been taken over by camera- and radar-based sensor technologies and cellular. More importantly, these technological alternatives have arrived with the support of consumer demand.

After car makers, suppliers and the Federal government have expended more than $800M on DSRC research, the best the auto industry has to show for its efforts is a single car equipped with the technology: the Cadillac CTS from General Motors. Even this implementation is a sad tale as CTS sales have been in a tailspin in advance of the launch of the CT5 replacement.

The realization has set in that GM only added DSRC to the CTS to preserve access to the 5.9GHz spectrum for DSRC on behalf of the entire automotive industry. GM made the move to counter the Federal Communications Commission which is considering opening the same spectrum for unlicensed Wi-Fi use.

Rather than follow GM's lead, every other auto maker remained on the sidelines. Not a single competitor stepped forward to bring DSRC to their North American vehicles. GM's DSRC gambit stimulated little enthusiasm from consumers and the industry's non-reaction created no consumer outrage.

Among the many challenges facing the DSRC diehards is the fact that six months into the Trump Administration NHTSA - the agency responsible for the mandate - still lacks an administrator. In the meantime, NHTSA's Affiliated Testbed program for prototyping and testing DSRC technology has been shuttered and the latest word is that the agency's Self-Driving Car Council has been idle since January resulting in the departure of some members.

While NHTSA has sat idly by, the 3GPP met in March and concluded writing its specifications for LTE Release 14, according to an upcoming Strategy Analytics wireless report. This will set the stage for cellular wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communications in LTE and, ultimately, 5G.

https://tinyurl.com/y7go4vef - "Cellular V2X Making Progress and Auto Industry Engagement Needed" - Strategy Analytics

The importance of cellular as an alernative to DSRC for vehicle-to-vehicle communications lies in the fact that new cars are increasingly coming to market with cellular connections and the wireless industry is just a few short years away from introducing 5G cellular technology capable of direct device-to-device communications independent of the wireless network. More importantly, 5G operates in the same spectrum as DSRC but offers greater density and throughput with greater range and lower latency.

In the words of one industry observer close to the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) community that has put all its eggs in the DSRC basket: "DSRC is a victim of OBE" - overtaken by events.

The Trump Administration is increasingly seen as disinterested in any new mandates or regulations in any industry and has, in fact, emphasized the elimination of regulations. For the auto industry this has meant reviewing NAFTA and CAFE standards and challenging California's emissions mitigation initiatives. The Trump Administration may even scotch the backup camera mandate.

In this context the requirement for additional and expensive hardware and software to be added to cars along with correlated investments in infrastructure represent obvious non-starters. There's simply no money left to continue to offer the small government grants that have stimulated what little interest remains in DSRC.

Does this mean DSRC is indeed dead? Nothing is harder to kill than a defunct technology. Just look at how long cassette decks and CD players lingered in dashboards before the onset of smartphones and Bluetooth brought their demise.

This means that DSRC will stick around for another few years. One persistent promoter, Toyota, has deployed the technology in Japan, but has yet to bring it to the U.S. It is no coincidence that Toyota lacks a global cellular vehicle connectivity strategy. In the absence of an active embedded cellular connection in most of its cars around the world, the implementation of DSRC makes sense.

Were Toyota to introduce DSRC in North America it would be the automotive equivalent of one hand clapping as Toyota vehicles would have no vehicles to communicate with other than the MY17 Cadillac CTS. No, the end of DSRC is nye and Japanese and North American automakers would do well to get on the 5G bandwagon.

Wireless carriers such as AT&T and Verizon have begun their North American testing of 5G for use in vehicles. Ford Motor Company has seen the light and signed onto the 5G Automotive Association currently working on standards that will impact the automotive and wireless industries. Honda? Nissan? Toyota? FCA? GM? C'mon in, folks. This is one connection you won't want to miss.

Roger C. Lanctot is Director, Automotive Connected Mobility in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics. More details about Strategy Analytics can be found here: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/automotive#.VuGdXfkrKUk