A wider global trend that will see V2X technology become the standard in most vehicles:
The future connected vehicle does not just use a standard smartphone cellular connection but also takes advantage of dedicated V2X safety communication channels. V2X, which stands for Vehicle-to-Everything, uses either Wi-Fi or cellular-based technology to facilitate communication with other vehicles and traffic infrastructure. If regulation or safety standards mandate this technology, then V2X is set to become the "digital seatbelt" of the future, promising to reduce accidents, improve congestion, and reduce emissions globally by allowing vehicle safety systems to talk to each other and to city traffic infrastructure, even in the pouring rain, dense fog, or busy carparks.
The two most popular technologies for V2X, DSRC [Dedicated short-range communications], and C-V2X [Cellular-Vehicle-to-Everything], both require different hardware. DSRC is based on Wi-Fi protocols, and C-V2X is based on 4G or 5G protocols. Currently, there are approximately 1 million V2X-connected vehicles on the road globally, with those mainly concentrated in Europe and China. About half the market is using DSRC-based technology, and the other half of the market is using C-V2X technology, with most of these vehicles being available in China.
IDTechEx is forecasting a significant market shift towards C-V2X technology, with over 90% of the market forecasted to be using 5G-based C-V2X technology by 2034. The biggest contribution to this shift is regulation — the two largest vehicle markets in the world, the US and China, both have governmental organizations actively pushing for C-V2X adoption and have formally abandoned DSRC technology.
[...] If a technology is included in a New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), OEMs aiming to achieve a high safety rating must include it in order to pass certain tests. China has announced V2X inclusion in the CNCAP from 2024 onwards, which is set to result in significant growth for the technology in China. Many manufacturers target a 5-star score in NCAPs, as NCAP scores can significantly impact sales.
[...] One area where V2X could make the largest impact is for autonomous vehicles (AVs). The number and sophistication of sensors in an autonomous vehicle are vast and increase with the level of autonomy. AVs like those in Phoenix or San Francisco currently depend on LiDAR [light detection and ranging], radar, and cameras for the majority of their perception. Each sensor fulfills important functions and ensures robust and safe operation, but these vehicle sensor systems are limited by line-of-sight. Using either DSRC or C-V2X, autonomous vehicles can transmit information at a dedicated frequency (~5.9GHz), with V2X acting as an extra sensor that works in all weather conditions and can go through walls and obstacles, effectively solving the line-of-sight problem. The main feasible method for achieving this is to use V2X to broadcast the location-related information of each car. A connected vehicle receiving the information can calculate the possibility of collision with the other vehicle using onboard compute. If the risk is high, the driver (or passenger of an autonomous vehicle) will be immediately warned, and the system will adjust accordingly to avoid a collision safely and effectively.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kell on Thursday September 12 2024, @08:49AM (4 children)
I don't want my car capable of two-way communications. I don't want it to be able to receive instructions or send data that are in anyway linked to my driving systems. I will not buy a car with this installed.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday September 12 2024, @01:44PM
Their goal is regulatory capture where it'll be made illegal to sell a new car that does not use it.
Create some licensable patents, get it written into law as a requirement, cash in.
Sometimes I think they make announcements like this when the used car market prices are getting too low, much like hideous touchscreen dashboards.
No, it'll only be weaponized in certain areas of the USA; imagine getting tickets for driving with a "service engine soon" light, or getting pulled over and arrested because your cat converter got stolen.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Thursday September 12 2024, @03:14PM
To think that the likes of "self-driving vehicles" in "I, Robot" and "Minority Report" were thought of as science fiction / dystopian. Surprise, it was more of a "not feasible at this moment" concept than a "we've not developed the science to even get there yet" concept.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Unixnut on Friday September 13 2024, @08:41AM (1 child)
Then you probably will no longer be able to have a car. They are making it harder and harder to keep an "old" car around. Here in Europe they are already ahead of the US in banning/restricting older cars from cities and generally making it as difficult and expensive to keep them on the road. Not taking into account manufacturers themselves don't want to support or provide spare parts for old cars, they want you to buy their new cars.
They started the "always on" connected car thing earlier in the EU, most cars from 2014 have it mandated, along with a built in GPS locator, microphone and black box "to be activated in emergencies" (although you have no idea whether it is tracking and recording non stop or not).
So for me the cut off point for car age is 2013.
The local laws have already banned any import of cars that are less than EURO3 standard (which are effectively any cars before 2005), and are now talking about raising that to banning any cars less than EURO5 soon (anything earlier than 2009). Eventually it will reach the point where the only options available are to buy a post-2013 car, or not have a car at all.
I've been car free for almost 3 years now, and not by choice. Simply the cars I want to buy and own the regulations will not allow, and what cars they do allow me to buy are cars I don't want.
As I am stubborn its been a bit of a stalemate right now, but the government is not going to relax the rules, in fact they are more likely to restrict it further. I guess from their point of view forcing people out of having cars is a win anyway.
I think a lot of people also don't want these new cars. The older car second hand market prices have really exploded around here. It kind of makes sense, because if you were able to import and register an old car before the rule change, why would you sell knowing you can't easily buy or import another? The artificial restriction drives up the price.
After all had I managed to get the cars I wanted before the rule change I would not sell them either. Most likely they would be sold as part of my estate after I pass away, assuming nobody else in the family wanted them first.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kell on Saturday September 14 2024, @08:49AM
I lived car-free for 6 years until my father died, then I inherited his old 2004 Commodore. It's a good car and I keep it pristine; I'll keep running it as-is until I need to convert it to electric, and then I will keep running it until it's illegal to drive. Then I'll switch to a bicycle. Fuck them, they're not getting my money.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 12 2024, @09:53AM (20 children)
It's the only way to make a self-driving car IMHO. Cars tell neighbouring cars "I'm about to stop". Road signs tell cars "there's a 50 mph speed limit here". It is perfect for highways, where the roadway is well-controlled to be free of non-vehicles; this is where self-driving cars are most valuable anyway. I don't see any other way to make a self-driving car.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2024, @11:36AM (6 children)
Yes, and no. I agree, direct vehicle to vehicle and traffic control systems communication would be a good short cut for implementation and improvement of the current system which basically relies on human drivers predicting each others' next moves based on 99% visual cues plus sound.
However, non-participants in the V2X network, starting with pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, potholes, official human traffic directors, etc. will be even more disadvantaged than the currently are, I would predict more unfortunate interactions like V2animal interactions we have today.
Self driving must overcome the existing challenges of driving at least as well as an above average human driver without V2X networking before it starts to rely on V2X networking as a crutch. Particularly when the network layer is going to be something as easily disrupted as WiFi, there needs to be a big red V2X OFF button more conveniently accessible to the human driver than the horn.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday September 13 2024, @08:48AM (1 child)
Don't worry! They will just mandate tracking beacons for all pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, etc... track all the things, everywhere!
I write this tongue in cheek, but in reality if the goal of the powers that be is to track everyone, then creating a problem for which the solution is even more pervasive tracking of everyone "for their own safety" is a win-win.
After all, it will be hard to argue against tracking everyone on the basis of privacy and freedom arguments, if the other side's argument is that they want to stop children/cyclists/pets being run over by vehicles.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 13 2024, @11:32AM
I have a sailboat on the river of a major port. We don't usually go out by the commercial traffic, but if we want ocean access we have to.
I decided that if we ever start going to/from the ocean more than once or twice, I am going to equip our boat with a VHF that includes the GPS announcement feature, so we show up on the navigation screens of the big cargo ships. I believe the system is linked to the Internet, so whenever it is on anyone anywhere in the world can track our boat, like that kid did to Elon's plane... Not that a 30' sailboat is particularly stealthy to start with, unlike the plane, the boat isn't required to even be equipped with the system, much less switch it on. Also, of course, just because you show up on the nav screen of a 2000 ton cargo ship doesn't mean they will stop or go around you, but at least they might blow a horn or know that they hit you if you end up unable to get out of their way.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 13 2024, @08:51AM (3 children)
That's why I picked highways - in this environment it is very easy to control for non-vehicles. Fences for example are a well known technology.
I agree that for city driving things are very different. I don't think self driving will ever really work here.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 13 2024, @11:23AM (2 children)
>Fences for example are a well known technology.
With well known deficiencies, especially when an animal breaches the fence and then becomes trapped inside.
We recently rented eBikes in Santa Monica and inadvertently took the auto route down the cliff to the coast highway, where we were trapped by the cliff on one side and four lanes of solid traffic with two tall concrete walls blocking our access to the bike trail we were trying to get to on the beach. Trapped by the structure of the roads like animals inside a fence line. We escaped back up the blind curve one way ramp against traffic, it wasn't an experience I would recommend to a friend.
Yes, self driving vehicles can work in limited access environments. Miami built a driverless people mover system with rubber wheeled cars on elevated concrete tracks in the 1980s. The tracks were built and unused for over a year before the cars started running on them, pigeons loved their new turf above the streets. I rode several times in the first few months, the carnage was extreme, paved with squashed pigeons in many places. After about a year, the pigeons who wouldn't get out of the way of the electric cars were removed from the gene pool, it runs pretty clean now.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday September 13 2024, @02:15PM (1 child)
So not self-driving, rather genetic cleansing system (for pigeons and deer). Nietsche would be proud.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 13 2024, @03:35PM
Well... it was the '80s... they gave it an _almost_ exclusive track to run on (like you are suggesting) and the cars would "drive" from station to station, usually stopping to open the doors and let passengers on and off - they had some rough times with the software early on, stopping early, not stopping at some stations, but it was a simple loop system, pretty hard to mess up unless you ram a stopped car at full speed. When empty they were pretty peppy on the acceleration, at least at first, I think they realized that they would have less people falling down inside the cars if they accelerated and decelerated more gently.
Of course, those are stand-up mini metro train type cars that hold upwards of 20 people... they could make the track longer and more branchy, more stations, more lanes, smaller cars, better software, better V2X network coordination, and implement near-private near-point-to-point transit for lots of people, but.... it wouldn't be cheap at all.
I met Dean Kamen shortly before he released "Ginger" - the self balancing scooter that "was going to change the world." Well, yeah, if you get cities to completely rebuild their infrastructure, we could all scoot around on concussions-waiting-to-happen (never fear, he also makes and sells self-balancing wheelchairs!) and get to our destinations with less congestion. You just need dedicated lanes for the scooters, weather protection, some place to park all the damn things (have you seen the Lime and similar rental e-scooters lately?)... Shockingly, nobody was interested in providing free infrastructure just to use his fancy new contraption to its fullest potential. That same infrastructure cost is why the Boring company is so boring... tunnels are damn expensive, even if you modernize how they are made.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by datapharmer on Thursday September 12 2024, @11:41AM (7 children)
At some point though if we are spending that much money on infrastructure upgrades and it is only useful on freeways does it make more sense to just do true high-speed rail? You could have some trains that allow both people and cars to get on and off like a ferry for those that can't use public transit at their destination.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2024, @12:09PM (3 children)
Great idea. Trains could also be used to transport goods, rather than the huge number and concentration of lorries now on highways.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2024, @01:37PM (2 children)
The US has had the Amtrak "Auto Train" since at least the 1970s. It has never been very popular, though I will note: when you get to a certain level in the economic picture - like the original owner of our $80,000 Mercedes who spent half his time in Ohio, the other half in Naples, Florida - that car did more miles on trains and other carriers (likely mostly highway based car carriers) than it drove for itself. In the CarFax there was literally a routine service in Ohio, then another service a month later in Florida with barely 100 miles more on the odometer. Perhaps they were cheating the recorded miles, but the more likely scenario for that owner was: he shipped the car.
So, yeah, the rich have enjoyed shipping their vehicles by rail for decades, but somehow it has never made it to the mainstream, anywhere that I'm aware of.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Thursday September 12 2024, @02:09PM (1 child)
You can look up the fare at amtrak.com, its about $100 coach seat per person, a room costs about as much as a big city hotel room, but its worth it, and cars cost $510 and trucks/suv cost $580 each way.
VA to FL is about an 12 hour 800 mile drive, so taking a train for 16 hours while you sleep half the time is a pretty good deal.
Your car does not cost the standard IRS deduction per mile, but 67 cents per mile is at least a starting point, so Amtrak is obviously not charging what it costs but charging what the market will bear... if you were able to deduct the cost of the autotrain it would be $536 and Amtrak is charging $510 or $580 so its competitive with driving.
Note that trucks are not that much cheaper than trains. For the LOLs I looked at roadrunner and they want a somewhat wider range of prices $500 to $800 and 2-4 days. Of course there is the convenience factor, RR does door to door service including residential pickup and delivery, so its probably "worth more" even if the price is about the same. If I was living at both locations long term I'd use roadrunner for the convenience, but if I was visiting I'd auto train.
Of course a little known factor is Enterprise will rent me a car for somewhere around $1K/month, so it would be foolish to ship your own car for less than a month's stay, it would be cheaper to long term rent. Also if the car breaks down far away from home while on vacation, etc, its not my problem LOL. People sometimes act weird about paying $1K to rent a car, despite paying many thousands for international airfare all the time, weird.
Air fare is a huge scam where there is no commodity "price" its HEAVILY advertised if you buy some obscure deal you can fly VA to FL for $75 or something, but if you look up actual flight prices for real humans at real times, its more like $300 to $400 and about six hours figuring airport delays and security theater etc.
Amtrak's train service is shockingly competitive.
I have taken long distance trains for fun and its a good time and fairly cheap IF you like looking at scenery and can entertain yourself with a laptop and/or books. If you're just trying to move kilos of mass from one place to another as cheaply and uncomfortably as possible, or spend a huge amount more money to have a microscopically better or faster time, there are alternatives to amtrak.
I've taken the Chicago to NYC train a few times. Chicago is a very long daytrip for me, living in the midwest. The economics get even weirder if I'm billing a client for working on my laptop while on the train. Sure, it's probably $50/hr to ride the train on average, but if I spend half the time billing a client for more than that, I win?
I will say trains can be pretty loud and the rocking motion is more disruptive than a cruise ship but less disruptive than any boat smaller than a cruise ship, so it may not be ideal programming environment. Yet its better than any open plan office... I can't 'really work' on an airplane that's too cramped and uncomfortable; I can pretend to do busywork but its not really productive.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2024, @05:54PM
>VA to FL is about an 12 hour 800 mile drive, so taking a train for 16 hours while you sleep half the time is a pretty good deal.
-ish. We actually took a vacation in Washington DC from Florida via Amtrak around 2015, and it looked like this:
Silver Meteor northbound, daily departure time: 4:30am from sketchy AF station with no safe parking. Heeeell no.
Rent car, drive north to Charleston and spend 2 nights there touristing around, return (slightly premium one way Enterprise "drops you off" policy) rental car at office nearest Amtrak station, Enterprise "drops us off" at train station to catch the Silver Meteor at something reasonable like an 8:30 or 9am departure... ride, and ride, nice seats compared to an airplane but they better be because you ride and ride and ride - tracks through the swampy lands (and there are a lot) apparently proceed at 40mph or less. Quite a few stops, but mostly you ride, and ride all day from Charleston to the outer DC metro area where you stop - about 20 minutes before scheduled arrival at Union Station, and you sit, and sit, and sit... until finally you are released at Union Station after 9pm to then navigate the Metro to your AirBnB... No Auto-Train option on the Silver Meteor route then. The places Auto-Train did go had even worse schedule problems. Anyway, instead of suffering the train schedule back, we flew from DC one way for something like $79 per person.
I see they now run two trains daily, with a very different phasing of the schedule - more friendly for a North Florida -> Washington DC trip, but still not great when you get the all-too-common 90+ minute delays, and I don't think there's an AutoTrain option there - when there is there's significant loading / unloading delays involved at the endpoints.
So, yeah, when you happen to live within 100 miles of an Auto-Train endpoint and want to be going somewhere within 100 miles of an Auto-Train endpoint, and the schedule for your travel isn't involving zombie hours... it's competitively priced with driving yourself. I think that level of service is available for less than 1% of US travelers. If it were available for a trip we were taking, we'd probably try it - we'd like to train out to Arizona or maybe up the Oregon Coast and across to Montana, but it seems that the only functional long range routes all go through Chicago, meaning you could average about 12 hours a day of driving an average of 50mph and probably still beat the train from Florida to Arizona, at a comparable cost.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2024, @01:25PM
But muh freedum, muh libertiez, muh devine rahts!!! Keent no city train git tuh muh homestead out on tha crik. /s
You think gun rights are hard to abolish? The right to burn mass quantities of fossil fuels to propel two+ tons of metal, glass and plastic, these days, at lethal speeds for both the occupants and bystanders, the right to not wear seat belts (still protected in most states as a secondary offense, not a reason to stop), the right to ride motorcycles without helmets.... as numerous (and dangerous) as gun nuts are, they've got nothing on the automobile industry. Nothing in the US makes more jobs than providing and using the infrastructure and energy for people to drive from A to B. 4.8 automobile related deaths per hour in the U.S. 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people. That's more than this scenario:
https://boingboing.net/2024/09/11/tom-the-dancing-bug-news-of-the-times-another-u-s-school-hit-by-intercontinental-ballistic-missile.html [boingboing.net]
(yes, above is a repost, but I think it's worth it, especially if you missed it the first time.)
One major problem is: most US citizens are barely wealthy enough to afford to keep their privately owned automobiles going. Transportation is a critical system that we've set up with this private ownership of vehicles using public roads, and changes that increase the cost of the vehicles (many of which the US has implemented over the past 4 decades) are running up against the wealth distribution limits of the "bottom half." Not knocking Eisenhower's interstate system, it was the right thing at the right time, but... all those thousands of miles of high speed highways through underpopulated (mostly red state) areas that barely utilize even 10% of the traffic capacity of the roads... that's a very luxurious infrastructure, provided by federal tax dollars, which has shaped our economy to use this "free" resource to centralize manufacture and distribution of goods, labor and recreation. It's like when computers "promised to reduce the paperwork" but instead "simple" forms exploded from one to two pages up to ten to twenty, and the mental work of processing all the information exploded because the physical work of generating the documents almost vanished - not to mention the content producers': "forgive me for the length of this letter, I don't have time to write a shorter one" effect whereby concise writing has died (witness: this post.) 40 years later, we're starting to get things done without printing, and the impenetrable verbiage of "agreements" "training" "procedures" and everything else continues to proliferate, because it can on the producer side, consumers of the actual information be damned.
Point, you ask? Mostly, this morning rant is driving at: if our infrastructure doesn't start charging users equitably for the true costs (not value) of their use, if it continues to be a "free" (paid by invisible taxes) resource for all to use, the surrounding economy will continue to shape itself to exploit that "free" resource in ways that are ultimately inefficient. Yes, some "grease" for the tightwads is helpful to get the economy moving, but when we start providing smart roads, or high speed rail, or other fabulously expensive infrastructure which ultimately serves to put "drivers" out of work... well, I just found another reason we need UBI.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 12 2024, @02:12PM
Trains connect to nothing and go nowhere, highways connect to everything and go everywhere. It would be a hard sell...
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday September 12 2024, @04:01PM
Heh. Ask California about that.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2024, @12:04PM
It's all fun and games until some haxorz take remote control of cars. They'll make Greta Thunberg's traffic jambs look like a joke.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Thursday September 12 2024, @12:25PM (2 children)
Problem there is that I don't want one.
My car has brake lights. IDK about yours.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2024, @01:49PM (1 child)
I'd just like to rant a moment about the Prisioner's dilemma fail we have going on in the US surrounding brake lights and headlights.
In the 1990s we added a 3rd brake light, because vehicles with a 3rd brake light are "safer" than those without. Sure they are. Vehicles with a 10,000W multi-pattern flashing strobe brake light are also "safer" than those without one, and we're slowly creeping in that direction, now with brake lights thin at flash when first applied - such a joy to drive behind when the driver in front lightly taps their brakes absent-mindedly every 100 meters or so... Yes, you notice _him_, but he's well on the way to creating "alarm fatigue" in the following vehicles, and absolutely is de-sensitizing other drivers to "normal" brake lights that don't put on a seizure inducing show at every gentle depression of the pedal that doesn't even engage the friction surfaces.
Then, headlights - obviously if you can illuminate the road in front of you with 5 billion candella in high CRI with your "still under the 65W legal limit" ultra-tech quantum-dot LED super-bulbs, YOU benefit - right up until the blinded oncoming vehicle loses control and ends up crashing into you. I'm astounded that auto regulations in the US stood still and kept legally permissible light emission definitions wattage based instead of actual emitted lumens. Back in the 1970s when we still had annual inspections, my father would run halogen bulbs - which are brighter for the same wattage than conventional bulbs - and he would have to swap them back to conventional bulbs for inspection because apparently the halogens were bright enough to damage the inspectors' CdS photo-sensors.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2024, @10:32PM
Vehemently agree on all points. How did HID and now LED headlights get DOT acceptance, but without measuring actual light output?
How about, in a supposed "democracy", why aren't we drivers getting to vote on how bright headlights should be?
And no fair if you have a new car with retina-burners- you don't get a vote.
I don't understand what's happening to the world.
I used to work with a guy early 80s who had aftermarket halogen bulbs and headlamp housings, and he had to swap out the entire things for inspection. Halogen, which is dim orange by most of today's LED headlights.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2024, @08:17PM
> It's the only way to make a self-driving car IMHO.
Waabi, which is trialing self-driving trucks now, disagrees. Here's a video from last week with the boss of Waabi explaining why their software design is different/better than others. It includes discussion of their simulation/test system that allows working back after a simulated-accident occurs, to see the chain of causality. I couldn't follow all the details, so if any one here on SN can comment on this "AI" development, that would be interesting to me.
Among the questions she answers is one about V2X--and her reply is very clear, along the lines of, "We will never willingly rely on V2X, although if it's available we might try to use it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrc00SHuXkY&list=PL2YKNGvzfdh0AU8HSRxE2pT9V7ByDffGZ&index=1 [youtube.com]
The video also discusses the big truck builders and trucking industry companies that Waabi is partnered with--they are quietly setting themselves up for long term success. I've watched/read a number of other presentations on self-driving and this is the first one that begins to convince me that it may actually make sense--outside the very small-area demonstration projects that we see now.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday September 12 2024, @12:53PM
That's fine, as long as I can take wire cutters or a power inductor to it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zzarko on Thursday September 12 2024, @01:16PM (1 child)
... to distribute ads and malware!
C64 BASIC: 1 a=rnd(-52028):fori=1to8:a=rnd(1):next:fori=1to5:?chr$(rnd(1)*26+65);:next
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 12 2024, @01:35PM
It's going to work out two different ways:
"For your safety, to prevent inattentive driving and falling asleep while driving which kills a bazillion people per year, you horn will sound until you enter the silence code hidden on the billboard advertisement for boomer prescription meds. Thank you for your support."
or
"The brand new entrance gate for the parking garage at work, paid for by a grant from Ford Motor Company, will not open unless you are driving a V2X car manufactured within the last two years, such as the Ford Expedition 2024 starting at $55,630. Please purchase a new car or park elsewhere."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 12 2024, @02:24PM
No good ham radio news. DSRC is/was 5.895–5.905 GHz after slicing the band ever smaller as people refused to use it, whereas V2X was made out of the carcass of DSRC and is 5.905–5.925 GHz
My point being there's unlikely to be a delicious flood of gear on ebay and industrial auction sites that can be repurposed for ham radio 5cm purposes. Sure, they'll be some, but a cheap water proof antenna or gain block that worked on DSRC will pretty much work on V2X.
Thinking back to the "old days" when tons of really high quality linear amplifiers for VHF/UHF hit the auction sites when analog TV was shut down. Thats not happening when they pull the plug on DSRC. Aside from obviously a small amount of the huge TV transmitter market is a lot of equipment, whereas a dead system like DSRC probably won't have much to surplus/auction when they pull the plug, so a small fraction of about nothing isn't going to be much.