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Cisco and NXP invest in Cohda, will work together to enable connected car
More than a year after NXP Semiconductors worked with Cohda Wireless to hook up cars via 802.11p, the chip maker has decided to invest in its partner with a little help from Uncle Cisco. While the PR is mum on the exact amount, the investment is apparently significant enough that all three companies are set to work together. Cohda's wireless knowhow, NXP's semiconductor chops and Cisco's vast infrastructure would join forces -- á la Voltron -- to help usher in the era of the connected car. By enabling car-to-car (C2C) and car-to-infrastructure (C2I) communications, drivers could avoid hazards, evade bad traffic and even form "trains" of vehicles on the road like what Volvo's demonstrated with its SARTRE project. No word on a timeline for when we'll see this on public roads, but automotive-qualified IEEE 802.11p products are said to be one of the trio's first goals, so hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later. [Image credit: Creativity103, Flickr]
NXP and Cohda teach cars to communicate with 802.11p, hopes to commercialize tech by 2014
Ford promised to give our cars X-ray vision, and this little blue box might be the key -- it's apparently the first standardized hardware platform for peer-to-peer automobile communications. Called C2X (for "car-to-x"), the module inside is the product of Cohda Wireless and near-field communications gurus at NXP, and it uses 802.11p WiFi to let equipped cars see one another around blind corners, through other vehicles, or even chat with traffic signals up to a mile away. Pocket-lint got a look at the technology during Automotive Week, and got a good idea of when we can expect the tech; NXP says it should begin rolling out in 2014, and hopes to have 10 percent of the cars on the road gleefully gabbing by 2020.
