A quarter of a century ago, the First Era of the Connected Vehicle was kicked-off by the former CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, at the 1996 Chicago Auto Show. “Project Beacon” was eventually renamed to OnStar and was enabled by in-vehicle sensors, live advisors and multiple intelligent algorithms. However, the connection itself wasn’t all that intelligent; only a conduit for the information flow between vehicles and operation centers. Point to point…

How The Second Era Is Different
The major difference shall be the multipoint-to-multipoint communication, which can either be characterized as local networks, broadcast networks or some combination thereof. Vehicle to Everything (V2X). Such systems will allow low-latency, local awareness, which is the underpinning of many applications, especially safety-related ones…

In this Second Era, though, the infrastructure has already been launched: 5G. Per 5Gradar.com, the revised towers will “… bring ultrafast speeds, greater capacity, and ultra-low latency – characteristics that will allow mobile networks to offer connectivity reliable enough to support critical applications for the first time.”