Volvo Car Corporation has since November 2011 been a member of the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium, which brings together most of Europe’s major car manufacturers.

Development under the CAR 2 CAR umbrella encompasses several different projects. Some relate to the way cars can communicate with each other (Car-2-Car, or Vehicle-to-Vehicle, V2V)—for example, to provide information in the event of road-works or a road accident—while others focus on how the infrastructure can convey information about what is happening along the route (Car-2-Infrastructure, or Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, V2I).

The overall goal of the consortium is the development and release of an open European standard for cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems and associated validation process with focus on Inter-Vehicle Communication Systems. The consortium is also pushing for global harmonization of Car-2-Car Communication Standards.

At the upcoming ITS World Congress in Vienna (22–26 October 2012) the CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium, representing 58 partners from vehicle manufacturers, suppliers and research organizations, together with the Testfeld Telematik Consortium, representing 14 partners from the industry, the public sector and road operators, will demonstrate a series of examples.

Using sections of the TT Consortium’s 45 km test-field route around the motorway junctions A2/A23-A4-S1 in Vienna, participants in the demo will experience the interaction between telematic services delivered from road side units to and between intelligent vehicles via an exclusively allocated ITS frequency band for Europe (5.875 GHz – 5.905 GHz).

The appointed technology and reference system has been established in DRIVE C2X, a European project which aims at initiating a framework for deployment of Cooperative Systems and its Europe-wide evaluation in large-scale field operational tests. Participants can also experience how intelligent cars as well as motorcycles and utility vehicles can alert one another to potentially dangerous situations, such as when road users are obscured or in a blind spot.

The CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium is an organisation founded by several European car manufacturers together with suppliers, research institutes and other partners.