By 2025, 67 million automotive 5G vehicle subscriptions will be active - three million of which will be low latency connections mainly deployed in autonomous and driverless cars. ABI Research highlights that 5G will unify connectivity in autonomous vehicles; enabling broadband multimedia streaming, cloud services for vehicle lifecycle management, the capturing and uploading of huge volumes of sensor data, and cooperative mobility through V2X (vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure) communication.
"V2X is a key requirement for the connected and autonomous vehicle of the future," says Dominique Bonte, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. "It is closely linked to the concept of cooperative mobility, allowing vehicles to exchange both status and event information with each other via reliable, low-latency communication technologies. With it, vehicles can be proactive and capture and share critical events happening locally with each other, ultimately ensuring safer driving practices."
But for V2X to become a reality, the automotive and transportation industries must first expand the scope and relevance of 5G cellular connectivity. ABI Research anticipates this to dramatically increase through 2025, allowing connectivity providers to bring more value-added services to the table and better position themselves in the automotive ecosystem. From there, new business models will emerge and ultimately more closely align the automotive and telecom industries.
ABI Research suggests that 5G's most promising capability for automotive will be its low latency, which could be as low as one millisecond. However, Bonte says that this will require underlying URLL (ultra reliable low latency) 5G capabilities based on the use of millimeter wave bands, latency reduction techniques, and advanced device-to-device (D2D) communication.
"The extent to which these latencies will be achieved will heavily depend on the 5G standards and deployment strategies, but the question is not so much if, but when the industry will embrace the disruptive approach," continues Bonte. "While right now, the industry is leveraging and upgrading current LTE/4G networks, it will eventually build new RAN networks based on millimeter waves. Once this happens, starting from the second half of the next decade, very low-latency capabilities will be achievable and V2X-enabled smart mobility applications will be possible."
