The United Kingdom’s Intelligent Transport Society, ITS (UK) has developed a “scale of connections for Co-operation of Connected vehicles”, to mirror the SAE scale for automated ones.
Developed by ITS (UK)’s Connected and Automated Vehicles Forum and supported by the Department for Transport and Highways England, this scale shows that connection and co-operation between existing and future vehicles and roads is very different from automation.
The new scale of connections explains to non-technical readers what services they might expect from a new vehicle or smartphone and highlight that work is still needed to make roads ready for connectivity, even if vehicles and communications are. It has deliberately not focussed on technology. It reflects the “HD ready” approach that was used for digital TV switchover to help users understand what would be possible without needing to understand the detail. The scale uses letters instead of numbers as in the SAE scale. Because this scale is customer-focused, a service only reaches that level when widely available (eg an app is published) rather than a demo or research project shows it working.
It will be reviewed periodically to take account of the rapidly changing landscape. For example, when V2I and V2V plans mature, level E may be split further but currently there are different views re V2V and V2I timing.