Powering connected cars with 5G

5G is an integral part of a transformation in the automotive industry, specifically as it relates to connected cars, which is changing the way automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) design and build their vehicles, how the vehicles operate on the street, how customers interact with them and how automotive OEMs can monetize their products. One of the key enablers of this transformation is the growing trend of software-defined vehicles, where a growing part of a vehicle’s functionalities is implemented in software that may be updated or even upgraded over time. This shift allows automotive OEMs to complement their legacy business models with models like subscription-based or on-demand “as-a-service”. The 5G connected car also gives them the ability to improve safety over the vehicle’s lifecycle in a more efficient way than before.

5G for vehicles production

5G is already increasingly present during the vehicle manufacturing phase. Connectivity enables services such as Automated Factory Parking (AFP), where remotely controlled vehicles are automatically moved across production areas and logistics hubs. In this context,private 5G networks offer the opportunity to tailor connectivity capabilities for highly customized, on-premise demand. The software-defined vehicle is born here, and a “digital twin” will follow it through its lifecycle, including expanded capabilities for “Over The Air” (OTA) software updates.

5G for telematics

The availability of vehicle telematics data from the fleet on the street is also an important resource for automotive OEMs. It enables them to monitor the performance of their fleet and, if necessary, dispatch predictive maintenance and updates, greatly benefiting for both customers and automotive OEMs. The increased availability of vehicle data also allows for analytics and more innovative services from the automotive OEM side, which may result in additional revenue streams and a more personalized customer experience. Central collection of detailed vehicle data will also be key for the continuous verification and re-training of machine learning-based algorithms for Autonomous Driving (AD), as well as potentially sharing across the smart city ecosystem as the digital infrastructure matures. As a result, the amount of data that will be transferred over networks is going to significantly increase over the coming years.

The richness and value of the insights are directly dependent on the amount of data collected by the automotive OEMs, which is in turn challenging from both a capacity perspective (especially in the uplink) as well as the cost of connectivity. An early adoption of 5G connectivity helps to address both these issues, thanks to the benefits of higher availability capacity and the potential for opportunistic exploitation of spare network resources for more convenient rates. A smart geographically distributed deployment of cloud infrastructure may also help relieve data costs, especially for use cases where data is produced and consumed locally, or where high levels of aggregation can occur before data is forwarded to more central cloud resources. Exploiting cloud infrastructure to process insights also creates the opportunity to offload some of the computing from the vehicle, which helps to increase efficiency and future-proofing while keeping hardware costs low.

5G for ADAS

Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are a set of highly sought-after features assisting drivers and significantly increasing road safety. Connectivity has an increasingly important role in ADAS, complementing on-board sensors with data that is either processed in the cloud, or comes from sources outside the vehicle, such as infrastructure sensors, other vehicles or ADAS service providers. Connectivity extends the ADAS capabilities of the vehicle beyond the limitations of on-board sensors and processing. In terms of requirements, the challenge here is attaining wider geographical service coverage made possible by the seamless integration of 4G and 5G, and their continuously expanding combined coverage and Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for data traffic that requires prioritization.

5G for AD

Autonomous driving further stretches the benefits of providing vehicles with capable connectivity. It is expected that automotive OEMs will progressively deploy AD capabilities throughout their fleets, and possibly at a premium. AD capabilities updates may entail, for example, extended operational domains for AD, consisting of being able to drive autonomously at higher speeds, in lower visibility conditions and on a wider range of roads. In order to progressively deploy these increasing capabilities, automotive OEMs need the ability to frequently and securely update large parts of the onboard software. This will place significant requirements on the network and (edge) cloud infrastructure that dispatches the software updates. There is also a keen focus on exploiting connectivity to extend on-board sensors with real-time enhanced perception as part of the HD dynamic maps that vehicles will use for navigation.

This is a development that is already happening in confined areas such as logistic hubs, harbors and factories, and will progressively expand to public roads over the coming decade. As AD vehicles may occasionally face situations they cannot resolve autonomously, remote control or even teleoperation capabilities will be regarded as an essential requirement for AD on public roads. This will lead to increased connectivity requirements especially in terms of latency, uplink capacity, coverage and QoS.

5G for the passengers

Passengers are coming to expect higher levels of in-vehicle services and entertainment, especially with increasing levels of automation. By 2025, the mobility services market is expected to exceed $230 billion dollars worldwide, making it an important growth driver for the connected car market. A meaningful technological trend is the deployment of highly capable dual-SIM modems in the vehicle, where the passengers can utilize the vehicle’s embedded connectivity capabilities with their own data subscription for entertainment, while the vehicle uses the automotive OEM’s negotiated subscription for its own services using the same 5G modem. eSIM is part of the solution, as it allows for flexible connectivity management while the automotive OEMs ship their vehicles worldwide and update their connectivity contracts.

Enabling software-defined vehicles

One common thread for these trends is that software-defined vehicles need to be delivered future-proof and possibly with over-dimensioned hardware capabilities in terms of connectivity, sensors and processing power, in order to enable future updates as well as safely and securely deliver new services over the entire vehicle’s lifecycle. Basically, the vehicle needs to be relevant for the first, second, third, etc. owners of the vehicle.

Cellular networks are already offering these capabilities thanks to the seamless integration of 4G and 5G. The continuous migration of spectrum from legacy standards towards 5G, as well as integrated features such as QoS, network slicing, dynamic policies and edge cloud can address a wide variety of services. New 5G capabilities are also continuously being developed by 3GPP and network vendors and will be a focus for upcoming network updates.

To learn more about connected cars and the role that 5G will play in their development, please read our Connected Cars report.

Learn more

Ericsson report: Connected Cars: Succeeding in the midst of economic and societal transformation

Ericsson: Connected Vehicles