V2I To Drive ITS Roadside Infrastructure Market Despite Regulatory Uncertainty

Posted by ABI Research

Much of the legacy Intelligent Transportations Systems (ITS) Market is still being dominated by Traffic Management and Electronic Toll Collect (ETC) systems for remote video monitoring, digital signage, intelligent traffic lights, and highway tolling. However, it’s the Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) component of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) that is expected to reinvigorate the roadside infrastructure market and generate revenue growth of US$22 billion by 2024 for the combined toll collect and traffic management  ITS market, according to a new report from global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research.

New V2I use cases and applications like camera-based pedestrian detection at junctions, Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA) type services, urban emission zones, roadworks notifications, and many more informational and mission-critical real-time information services are becoming available directly to vehicles. In fact, by 2030, around 670,000 V2X Roadside Units (RSUs) will have been installed globally.

“However, continued regulatory uncertainty in Europe and the United States around spectrum allocations for the competing Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) standards risks further delays of investments in roadside V2I units,” says Dominique Bonte, Vice President End Markets at ABI Research. “Developing and implementing hybrid V2X roadside units that support both standards is being considered by several technology vendors such as Commsignia, which launched a dual-radio roadside unit at CES 2020. But, units that support both standards will increase the cost and complexity,” Bonte adds.

On the other hand, roadside V2I units will increasingly be integrated into existing smart streetlight platform systems, cellular small cells, and other roadside equipment. This modular “multi-point” approach will reduce installation costs and accelerate deployments.

In the longer term, the prospect of ITS roadside infrastructure virtualization will fundamentally disrupt the ITS market. The arrival of low latency and high bandwidth 5G connectivity will enable edge cloud services to at least partially replace physical ITS roadside assets like digital and road signage, toll gates, and even traffic lights and video surveillance by making redundant the intermediate physical infrastructure layer between vehicles and the cloud. Next-generation traffic management centers will be cloud-based and remotely and automatically monitor and control driverless vehicles through services such as dynamically imposing flexible maximum speeds to optimize traffic flow. “This will require legacy ITS vendors such as Kapsch, SWARCO, and Q-Free to fundamentally transform their businesses,” Bonte concludes.―CT Bureau