Introducing the 5G Automotive Association
You cannot read any article or news report about the automotive industry these days without mentioning the promise of autonomous driving. We are indeed in the middle of an exciting revolution that touches all industrial sectors in an overarching effort to help us save time and improve lives through greater use of digital and communication technologies.
The automotive industry and the transportation sector in general are at the forefront of this revolution with the development of assisted driving, connected infotainment, driverless vehicles and data-driven optimizations. These new technologies will have a dramatic impact on how we buy, use and share cars, revolutionize the driving experience, help save lives and make our transportation systems smarter and more efficient.
According to the World Health Organization, there were about 1.25 million road traffic deaths worldwide in 2013 with another 20 – 50 million injured or disabled through traffic accidents. The overall economic impact of road crashes was estimated to be $518B globally and in some countries represents 1-5% of the GDP. We can and should use technologies to improve these statistics and save lives.
Studies suggest that downtown drivers spent 30% of their time just looking for parking. American drivers alone spent 6.9 billion hours stuck in traffic jams in 2014. That’s a lot of time (and fuel) that is wasted and could be used more productively otherwise.
These are of course multi-faceted challenges (and solutions), but it is clear that information and communication technologies play an increasingly important role. Advanced communications and computing, wireless connectivity to people and things, data analytics, cloud based optimizations and services across functional domains and industrial sectors form the technological foundation to drive the next era of automotive innovation.
At Nokia, we are committed to bringing our technological leadership, our innovation and our solutions forward to help transform the driving experience and transportation as a whole.
Given the tremendous challenges ahead, Nokia has teamed up with other key players in the telecom and automotive industries including Audi, BWM, Daimler, Intel, Qualcomm, Ericsson and Huawei to form the “5G Automotive Association (5GAA)” to develop, test and promote communications solutions and accelerate their global commercial availability. The goal is to address society’s connected mobility and road safety needs with applications such as connected automated driving, ubiquitous access to services and integration into smart cities and intelligent transportation systems of the future.
The main activities of the association are organized in working groups focusing on:
(i) defining and harmonizing use cases, technical requirements and implementation strategies
(ii) developing system architectures, solutions and specifications
(iii) making recommendations to standardization and regulatory bodies
(iv) developing business models and go-to-market strategies and
(v) running joint trials and pilot deployments.
The 5GAA was publicly announced late September and received a lot of positive coverage and very strong interest worldwide. It’s a global association and was founded to bring the telecommunications and automotive industries closer together, to provide and test joint solutions and accelerate the next revolution in the automotive industry. The association is open to the end-to-end ecosystem, spanning vehicle manufacturers, alternative car providers, suppliers, road operators, network infrastructure providers, device manufacturers and mobile operators across the entire automotive and ICT value chain. Any companies interested in being in a driver’s seat (no pun intended) for the connected mobility of the future is more than welcome to join and contribute to the association.
Are you ready for the next leap in automotive innovation? Are you ready for the driverless taxi? For 4K video streaming while zooming down the highway in a high-speed platoon? Sharing a car on-demand whenever and wherever you need it?
It’s all coming to a city near you in the near future!
Visit the 5GAA webpage for news and updates on the association. We have more information on Nokia 5G, the LTE path to 5G and IoT solutions.
Share your thoughts on this topic by replying below – or join the Twitter discussion with @nokianetworks using #5GAA #4G #5G #LTE #Automotive #IOT #innovation #Cloud
Article by Thierry Klein on Wed 19 October, 2016
Twitter: @thierry_klein