A1 motorway, a 52-kilometer Smart Road to experience the viability of the future

Motorways for Italy together with the subsidiary Movyon and in collaboration with Volkswagen Group Italy inaugurated the first Smart Road Motorways along which vehicles and infrastructure manage to communicate in real time. In particular, the operation concerns a section of 26 km between Florence North and Florence South and a stretch of equal length on the urban hub of Bologna.

Overall, then, it comes down to 52 km smart road totals that allows drivers of enabled vehicles to receives traffic information in real time. At the moment, the only vehicles enabled for communication V2I (Vehicle To Infrastructure) are those of the Volkswagen Group equipped with technology Car2X.

This is the technology, used for experimentation, which allows the car to communicate with the surrounding environment in a few milliseconds within a radius of 800 meters. In this way the car receives all the information on code, obstacles along the way, accidents, works in progressbut also on the presence of service stations suggesting the areas in which to stop.

Furthermore, it is a system that exploits the principle of collective intelligence. This means that as the number of vehicles in circulation equipped with this technology increases, its capabilities and the safety rate on the roads will also increase. In the future, in fact, Volkswagen plans to be able to adopt Car2X for the completely autonomous driving of their vehicles.

“To speed up the creation of the connected mobility ecosystem and, at a later stage, of the autonomous one, collaboration between all the players involved is necessary: ​​car manufacturers, technology companies, infrastructure managers, institutions and research centers. activation of the first Smart Roads is an excellent example of this, “he commented Stefano SordelliFuture Mobility Director of Volkswagen Group Italia.

The project falls within the scope of the program Mercury, a platform created by the ASPI group to create a unitary and coordinated pole aimed at innovation in the infrastructure sector. It is part of a modernization plan from 21 and a half billion euros and aims to develop innovative solutions that make it possible to simplify the meeting between supply and demand for sustainable mobility.