D.2.2: Analysis of Market Needs

The driving task is being increasingly supported through connectivity. Whether through the vehicles’ on-board systems or through connected devices used by the vehicle’s occupants, the ability to communicate directly with other road users, infrastructure and external systems is enabling safer, more efficient, more comfortable journeys. This is only likely to increase as more and more of the driving task is automated and vehicle connectivity will move from an optional extra to a key enabler for ensuring that these increasingly automated vehicles interact safely and effectively with each other, other users and the surrounding infrastructure. The capability of telecommunications and data management infrastructure is improving, making new levels of vehicle connectivity increasingly possible. The advantages of connectivity are recognised across the industry, such that the full benefits of vehicle automation can only be realised with this additional capability. The ICT Infrastructure for Connected and Automated Road Transport (ICT4CART) project has been launched to explore how this infrastructure should seek to develop in the coming years and further that development towards an effective ICT infrastructure for enabling the widescale roll-out of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). ICT4CART aims to design, implement and test in real-life conditions a versatile ICT infrastructure for the needs of higher levels of vehicle automation. One element of the ICT4CART project is to explore the market for this infrastructure, starting with an investigation into what the various associated users may actually need from this infrastructure in the coming years. Establishing the ways in which value is – or could be – generated by the infrastructure for groups such as road users, road network operators and fleet managers is an important first step in determining the business case for this infrastructure. Urban Foresight, as part of the ICT4CART consortium, has sought to undertake research in this space to support decision making regarding ICT infrastructure design and investment by exploring the needs of the end-users in this system and, hence, the market(s) for the services that this infrastructure enables. Work has been undertaken in other contexts, not least the EC’s C-ITS Strategy initiative, to describe the services that ICT infrastructure could offer. However, much of this work has been relatively narrow in its focus, too high-level or tied to a particular set of ICT technologies. To have a reasonable chance of understanding the value for the ICT infrastructure, therefore, there is a need for a holistic, valuebased, technology-agnostic assessment of the potential demand for information services for CAVs. Our approach to doing this has involved in-depth interviews with expert representatives from across the ICT4CART consortium and external organisations, supported by a wide-reaching desk study and a market structures workshop. The result was a framework and systematic categorisation of the information services which could make up separate ‘markets’, having have distinct user/value combinations, i.e. beneficiaries of services and associated primary benefits addressed by the services. The framework was structured around six groups: 1. Automated Driving: connectivity to support the automated decision making of road vehicles. E.g. Services that supply CAVs with information on the other road users in their immediate vicinity – or likely to enter their immediate vicinity within a short period of time. 2. Informed Journeys: connectivity to improve driving decisions, regardless of how automated the vehicle is. E.g. Services that supply CAVs with information about planned or unplanned ‘events’ which could relate to their onward journey, where an event is a real-world occurrence external to the normal operation of a road network but potentially having a noticeable effect 7 on that network. 3. Intelligent Management: connectivity to improve awareness of what is happening on a road network or other driving environment. E.g. Services that relate to the condition of the road network and surrounding environment derived CAV on-board sensors. 4. Coordination of Vehicles: connectivity to instruct automated vehicles in specific scenarios and coordinate their driving. E.g. Services that would supply a group of collocated CAVs with detailed, coordinated instructions on paths to take, manoeuvres to make and driving behaviours at specific times and under specific circumstances. 5. Connected Travellers: connectivity to connect vehicle passengers and improve their experience. E.g. Services for use by the passenger to access the web, consume on demand content and communicate (including internet calls). 6. Underpinning Services: connectivity and information services with commercial potential that enable a safe and effective CAV driving environment. E.g. Services that enable encrypted, private and secure communication between CAVs and infrastructure. Within each of these markets, applications of CAV technology will advance first in use cases where significant cost savings can be made in the more efficient use of resources. Those most referenced in both interviews and existing literature are: platooning, parking and shared transport services. For each of the six groups, the typical performance level was assessed. Research and publications on CAV information services do not yet agree on the standard performance levels required. In general, a lack of distinction between the information services’ purpose, value and transmission methods has hindered the development of a consensus on this matter. The approach that was used in this research was to define the performance levels across these parameters: privacy, latency, reliability, coverage, bandwidth, and granularity. The Automated Driving information services, for example, will require particularly low latency which will influence the technologies and architecture best suited to enable them effectively. Connected Traveller services, on the other hand, will require particularly high bandwidth but are not critical to the driving task. We have also investigated the main elements of the market structures for the information services, namely who is likely to pay to have these services enabled and how that will differ in different contexts. The main factors influence this include the features of the markets from which these services have emerged; the ownership and operational responsibility of the environment within which the services are deployed; the type of value generated by the services; and the performance demands of the services. This particular element of the research was preliminary investigation only and will form the basis for other market analysis and business model work later in the ICT4CART project. The framework presented as a result of this research will be useful for the development of more detailed system requirements of CAV ICT infrastructure along with more extensive service design. It can also be used to inform developments of other complimentary technologies within this sector. It can offer the basis for better dialogue and collaboration between the different parties, from local and national governments through to large established industries that need to work together in new ways. Finally, it can enable that collaboration to be centred around what generates value for users, and society at large.