Future Use Cases for Vehicular Communication based on Connected Functions

As software-defined vehicles continue to dominate automotive research, the vision for a future of extensively connected vehicular environments, including vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications and nationwide connected infrastructures, grows more pronounced. However, despite the existence of standards to support these advances, widespread adoption and integration into broader vehicular ecosystems remain elusive.Thus, the scope of this paper is to explore potential connected vehicle functions of the future and outline potential paths toward their realization. Utilizing the Delphi method, the authors engaged with experts from the German automotive industry to gain insights into emerging and feasible connected vehicle functions. The interviews served as a primary source for identifying promising vehicle functions, which were subsequently compared against existing literature to detect related functions and to group them into coherent clusters. Finally, by combining these clusters and the acquired knowledge, visions for the future of mobility were derived.The findings of this study reveal that the trajectory toward implementing connected vehicle functions is unlikely to follow a linear path. Instead, development is expected to occur through multiple, parallel scenarios. The success and prevalence of specific use cases will largely depend on the development of viable monetization strategies and business models that can sustain these individual "islands" of innovation. The paper concludes that future research should focus on strategies to integrate these disparate islands, aiming to forge a unified and comprehensive vehicular communication system.