When Hornets Talk to Beetles

It’s taken 30 years, but the automotive industry is now poised to begin the first cross-brand data sharing experience. ?The promise of vehicles communicating in real-time or near real-time at very low latency in the interest of collision avoidance is about to become real – and without a government mandate.

The reality will be enabled when Volkswagen follows through on its plan to launch new collision avoidance alerts to its suite of Car-Net connected vehicle services. ?The services being launched by Volkswagen – soon - include Emergency Safety Solutions H.E.L.P. (Hazard Enhanced Location Protocol) alerts – for disabled vehicles – powered by Haas Alert’s Safety Cloud which includes eight different alert functions.?

Since the Haas Alert Safety Cloud has already been deployed in millions of Stellantis vehicles, it means that a host of safety-centric alerts can be shared between Volkswagen, Dodge, Ram, and Jeep vehicles appropriately equipped.? Mercedes-Benz, which is currently beta testing Haas Alert’s Safety Cloud technology, may also be able to join the party.

Volkswagen says the new alerting system can provide in-dash notifications to drivers when approaching disabled vehicles, emergency responders, and other roadway hazards.? Now, disabled Stellantis-branded vehicles can self report their presence to oncoming Volkswagen vehicles - and vice versa. The company says the new features will be available in most MY24 and MY25 Volkswagen vehicles with an active Safe & Secure subscription.

Volkswagen says it is the first automaker in the U.S. to integrate ESS’ H.E.L.P. and Road Awareness collision avoidance alerts within a suite of connected vehicle services.? Tesla has previously introduced the H.E.L.P. application but only to provide enhanced emergency lighting to alert oncoming cars.

The possibility now exists for Volkswagen and Stellantis vehicles to mutually alert each other live, on the road, when encountering disabled vehicles – or when they become disabled.? The two auto makers will be able to share that data via Safety Cloud but even more sophisticated data sharing may be possible in the future.? Perhaps the COVESA Vehicle Signal Specification framework could be employed.

Volkswagen says H.E.L.P. can be activated manually when the driver turns on the hazard lights or automatically when airbags deploy.? The function mirrors alerts introduced by Volvo in some European markets that will allow disabled Volvo’s to alert other Volvo’s, but without sharing information with any other brands.

Car makers have equipped their cars with automatic crash notification systems for decades but have never seen fit to put the information to work in helping oncoming cars avoid disabled vehicles. The combination of ESS H.E.L.P. and the Haas Alert Safety Cloud is altering industry thinking about what data to share and how to share it.

The key difference is the sharing of validated, actual incident and location data based on vehicle sensors and on-board connections. This is a far cry from the user-reported data found in mobile apps or the formulaic and unreliable data regarding construction zones shared by departments of transportation via the Workzone Data Exchange - which has rapidly become notorious for unreliable and inaccurate information.

Haas Alert's road awareness data is derived directly from connected vehicles connected to the Safety Cloud. ESS's H.E.L.P. alerts are derived directly from connected vehicles enabled with the solution.

Oddly, in its press release, Volkswagen attributes the communications technology in use as cellular-vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X).? In reality, the alerting platform is enabled by vehicle-to-cloud-to-vehicle, good old-fashioned cellular.

Ironically, Volkswagen’s brand mate Audi announced its adoption of C-V2X technology as part of a demonstration at the 5G Automotive Association gathering in Berlin two weeks ago.? Both Audi and BMW demonstrated C-V2X technology for collision avoidance applications in partnership with Autotalks, Bosch, Commsignia, and Fraunhofer FOKUS.? The demonstrations used ETSI Release 2 messages.

The demonstrations in Berlin also included 5GAA members Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Keysight Technologies, LG, Mercedes-Benz, and Vodafone, and the Coalition for Cyclist Safety.? Here, too, the message was one of so-called ready-to-deploy, interoperable applications to increase awareness of vulnerable road users (VRUs) and emergency vehicles on public roads in central Berlin.

The safety awareness alerts were delivered via 4G and 5G networks via Multi-Access-Edge Computing (MEC) and precise positioning, as verified by Anritsu-supplied equipment.? 5GAA asserts, in its 2030 Roadmap that 5G is continuously being deployed in many car models and 5G-V2X Direct is expected to be mass-deployed in commercial vehicle models as early as 2026.

The shift of Volkswagen brand partner Audi to C-V2X in Europe marked a significant turning point for the Volkswagen Group and perhaps the entire European automotive industry.? It likely means that outmoded dedicated short range communication (DSRC) technology is finally dead after years of support from the European Commission and some European auto makers.

The fact that Volkswagen is pursuing inter-vehicle and inter-brand data sharing on two separate tracks – cellular in the U.S. and C-V2X in Europe – may have introduced a new potential source of conflict.? But Haas Alert’s Safety Cloud is connectivity agnostic – so maybe Hornets and Beetles will be able to happily exchange data long into the future - and maybe some other brands too.