Horiba Mira partners with Vodafone on automotive 5G

The investment will see Vodafone deploy and build a 4G and 5G mobile private network at the company’s Nuneaton site, expanding its self-driving capabilities, which already includes unrivalled expertise in the rising cybersecurity threats facing driverless technologies as well as the use of artificial intelligence in Unmanned Ground Vehicles in the defence sector.

According to a statement, the ultrafast data speed offered by 5G technology will allow Horiba Mira’s clients to explore the development of vehicles able to react rapidly to fast-evolving emergency situations by communicating with each other and the surrounding infrastructure in near-real-time.

Horiba Mira’s head of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies, Chris Reeves, claimed that creating this 5G capability is an important breakthrough in taking self-driving technology to the next stage of mainstream deployment and mass commercialisation. “As the self-driving industry transitions from developing standalone autonomous vehicles, to delivering self-driving vehicles that can communicate with each other and the surrounding infrastructure, having access to Vodafone’s 5G technology is a huge boost for the sector as a whole," he said.  "It will enable us to work and collaborate with the industry’s biggest players to ensure their technologies are safe, robust, convenient and efficient to hit our roads in the near future.”

“Our 5G technology makes self-driving vehicles on our roads not just a possibility, but a reality,” added Anne Sheehan, business director at Vodafone UK. "This mobile private network will play a huge role in supporting Horiba Mira’s cutting edge work on the development and testing of driverless technologies.”

The news follows the recent announcement that Vodafone has partnered with autonomous vehicle consortium, Midlands Future Mobility, to deploy 5G on more than 300 miles of key test routes in the West Midlands.