Connecting Vehicles to “ The Grid ” ∗

Providing Internet connectivity is a near-term goal for vehicle development. But much more profound advancements in transportation systems are expected as vehicles become an integral part of networked information and control systems. Future systems will need to address the balance between personal transport and societal challenges including growing population density, carbon emissions, global industrialization. By interconnecting vehicles with networking technology we will enable distributed local control applications such as accident prevention, route optimization, and traffic management; while permitting global optimizations that balance societal constraints such as throughput, regional energy use and air quality. In this position paper we explore some of the near term advancements and their possible long term impacts. ∗In Proc. NITRD National Workshop on High-Confidence Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems, April 3-4, 2008, Troy, MI. This work is supported by the NSF under grant No. CNS-0435353. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.