LAS VEGAS — Ever since Panasonic moved a prestigious new division to the neighborhood of Denver International Airport, the Japanese technology giant has been partnering with local public agencies for one purpose: to experiment.
The latest partner is Colorado Department of Transportation. Together, the two will prep 90 miles of Interstate 70 for connected cars and autonomous vehicles. The two have been working on plans since the fall and announced the union Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“In Japan, Panasonic has been a trailblazer in developing connected transportation systems and smart automobile technology,” said Tom Gebhardt, president of Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America. “We’re bringing some of those technologies to Colorado and working with the state to make transportation smarter, safer.”
Panasonic has long been developing automobile “infotainment” systems, including connectivity to the internet. But the company is also active in connected and autonomous vehicle technology, building systems to help cars talk to other cars or talk to road infrastructure, like traffic lights or other fixed object in the road. Using such Dedicated Short Range Communications, real-time data can be sent to other cars on the road warning of imminent hazards, like stopped vehicles or slippery patches of roadway.
Shailen P. Bhatt, CDOT’s executive director, told the audience that interest in the technology is driven by population growth — and safety.
“We talk about getting to zero deaths. We’re actually going the wrong way. Last year, 35,092 Americans lost their lives on American roadways. That’s the equivalent of a 747 crashing every single week,” Bhatt said. “In Colorado in the last two years, we’ve seen a 10 percent increase year over year in fatalities. That is unacceptable, and we know that 90 percent of these crashes can be eliminated with V2V (vehicle to vehicle) and V2I (vehicle to infrastructure) technology, connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles. That’s the genesis of our RoadX program where we go to the private sector and say, ‘What ideas do you have to make this better?’ That’s what we’re going to work on with the 90-mile stretch of I-70 with Panasonic.”
Panasonic committed to moving its Panasonic Enterprise Solutions technology hub to Denver in 2014. Last CES, it announced it would build a smart city with Denver. Mayor Michael Hancock stepped on the stage last year and returned Wednesday to share new developments, like smart street lights and autonomous shuttles that are being added to the CityNow and Pena Station Next development.
Teaming with the state’s transportation agency came at the right time for Panasonic, said Jim Doyle, president of Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Co.
“When you get into the technology of what we have to test out, Colorado really stepped up. This whole V2V and V2I is the foundation of what will be the bedrock of autonomous driving. If you don’t have those in place, you really can’t get to true autonomous driving in a way that the public will feel confident and safe,” Doyle said. “This will be the project that gets us to a point where we understand how it works.”
Doyle also said that Panasonic didn’t know anyone from CDOT when it committed to moving to town. He credits Hancock for connecting company and agency officials. Hancock himself is rooting for autonomous vehicles.
“Autonomous vehicles — it’s our future,” Hancock said. “The more we can get ahead of the curve on that, the better for all of us in Colorado.”
Bhatt said his agency is setting up the framework to make sense of all the data from smart transportation systems. But there’s no hard timeline so the agency isn’t stuck going in a direction that later proves moot. Bhatt pointed out that just last month, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed a rule that all new light-duty cars must have V2V technology inside.
Such technology would have eased traffic stress on Tuesday when a crash west of the Eisenhower Tunnel closed both directions of I-70. With V2V technology, cars at the scene would have relayed the information to other cars on the road so drivers could look for alternative routes or sit out traffic awhile.
“We had people who said, ‘Oh I got this on my app, Waze.’ Others were on CoTrip. But others were just, ‘I’m heading up the mountains.’ And then they sat there and sat there.” Bhatt said.
A future I-70 could turn the shoulder lane into an autonomous vehicle-only lane “since they have the ability to stay in a more narrow lane,” Bhatt said. Future phases could lead to additional lanes designated for the exclusive use of autonomous and connected cars (“they won’t slow down when there’s an incident on the other side,” Bhatt said).
