Skip to main content

EU presents a strategy towards C-ITS

The European Commission has adopted a European Strategy on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), a milestone towards cooperative, connected and automated mobility. The Strategy will make it possible to deploy vehicles that can communicate with each other and the infrastructure on EU roads as of 2019. Digital connectivity is expected to significantly improve road safety, traffic efficiency and comfort of driving, while boosting the market of cooperative, connected and automated driving and th
December 1, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The European Commission has adopted a European Strategy on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), a milestone towards cooperative, connected and automated mobility. The Strategy will make it possible to deploy vehicles that can communicate with each other and the infrastructure on EU roads as of 2019.

Digital connectivity is expected to significantly improve road safety, traffic efficiency and comfort of driving, while boosting the market of cooperative, connected and automated driving and the related creation of jobs.

The strategy aims to avoid a fragmented internal market and provide definition and support of common priorities. It plans to use a mix of communication technologies and to address security and data protection issues .It foresees the adoption of the appropriate legal framework at EU level by 2018 to ensure legal certainty for public and private investors. It also addresses the availability of EU funding for research and development projects and international cooperation, such as at the G7 level, on all aspects related to cooperative, connected and automated vehicles.

It also involves continuous coordination, in a learning-by-doing approach, with the C-ROADS platform, which gathers real-life deployment projects in Member States. With the help of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), projects in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom have received funding.

According to Lars Reger, CTO Automotive, 566 NXP Semiconductors, the EU decision to include a dedicated automotive wireless communication protocol in its newly decided ITS master plan is the right choice at the right time.  He says, “It reflects NXP’s findings after 10 years of research and V2X field-testing: Only a dedicated automotive wireless communication (802.11p) protocol can cover safety critical use cases, such as platooning and emergency braking. These and other types of autonomous decisions require extremely fast communications (low latencies) that cellular networks cannot achieve currently.

“Cellular networks still need further research, standardisation, field-testing and full network coverage. This EU decision sets the cornerstone for very important choices related to the European “Strategy on vehicles of the future” to be defined in 2017.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • ITS in the Baltic States: on the rise
    August 12, 2020
    In the Baltic states, on north-east Europe’s border with Russia, the ITS sector is on the verge of big growth, finds Eugene Gerden - but more
  • Mobility as a Service gaining traction in US and Europe
    December 15, 2015
    As Mobility as a Service starts to move into the mainstream of transport planning, David Crawford compares European and North American initiatives. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept fast gaining traction on both sides of the Atlantic as a way of giving travellers digital multimodal one-stop shops and journey planning tools as an alternative to private car use. Planned delivery methods include subscription-based travel packages in Europe, and 'mobility aggregator' apps, including employee commute ben
  • NTU Singapore and Schaeffler set up joint lab to develop smart mobility devices
    March 21, 2017
    Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) and Germany’s Schaeffler Group are collaborating in a new joint research laboratory at the university, the Schaeffler Hub for Advanced REsearch at NTU (SHARE at NTU), to tackle transportation challenges for Singapore within the context of the country’s Smart Nation vision. The lab will study various aspects of personal urban mobility and intelligent transportation systems for mega cities of the future. The research projects include studying human user beh
  • Will standardisation increase ITS interoperability?
    February 1, 2012
    Theoretical balance Kallistratos Dionelis, secretary general of ASECAP, comments on the European Commission's new ICT Standardisation Work Programme. I've just read a proposal from the European Commission on the 2010-2013 ICT Standardisation Work Programme. As ASECAP Secretary General this is one of my responsibilities. I work to receive information, to disseminate information and to build bridges and mutual understanding between policy-makers and the industrial world, between ASECAP and others.