Connected car testing goes live in UK as part of CITE consortium project
The UK connected and intelligent transport environment (CITE) consortium – a project managed by Visteon and aimed at creating one of the world’s most advanced live environments for connected and autonomous driving – has entered its second phase of testing, with connected cars going on trial on public roads to prepare the country’s road networks for self-driving cars. This latest development will see Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) trialing a range of intelligent connected features, including emergency vehicle, roadworks and traffic condition warnings.
The tests on public roads are part of the £7.1m ($9.3m) CITE project aimed at creating the UK’s first fully connected infrastructure. A motorway network covering more than 40 miles has been equipped with a world-first combination of wireless technologies (DSRC, 3/4G mobile networks, Wi-Fi and fibre optic networks), ensuring vehicles can always be connected to each other as well as the infrastructure.
Visteon is responsible for the overall technical architecture of the project, including multi-path connected car hardware and software, as well as development of a tailored smartphone application for enhanced driver information.
As the first automaker to take to the roads, JLR’s test fleet – which includes Discovery Sports, Range Rovers and F-PACEs kitted out with the wireless technologies – have started testing the impact of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications infrastructure on road safety, traffic flow and the ability to provide other services such as Wi-Fi and cybersecurity.
In April, the consortium illustrated the project’s readiness by demonstrating emergency vehicle warning (EVW), emergency electronic brake light (EEBL), road works warning (RWW) and traffic condition warnings (TCW) at JLR’s proving ground in Gaydon, UK. Designed to allow V2X communication and offer advanced notifications to drivers, these self-driving technology features offer great benefit to connected vehicle development and are expected to prove crucial in driving down the frequency of potential on-road accidents.
This next phase of testing is critical in testing the capabilities and providing valuable metrics of the connected network we’re developing. The strides we’re making as part of the UK CITE project are creating vital technologies to enable a safer and more efficient road network.
The UK CITE consortium comprises leading industry, academic and local and national governmental organisations. It is jointly led by Visteon and Jaguar Land Rover and includes Coventry City Council, Coventry University, Highways England Company Ltd, HORIBA MIRA, Huawei Technologies (UK) Ltd, Siemens, Vodafone Group Services Ltd, and WMG at University of Warwick.
