V2X a key AV component, but vehicles must be able to cope alone

Even amid the technical sophistication of the world’s urban centres in 2021, network signal dropouts are still common. Just ask anyone who has tried to book an Uber on their way out of a sold-out sporting event: though hardly a common feature of life under COVID-19, the presence of several thousand smartphone users in the same vicinity can quickly push cellular network capacity to its limits and crowd out 4G’s bandwidth. Meanwhile, some self-driving technology developers have acknowledged that so-called ‘urban canyons’, created by skyscrapers built in close proximity, can block GPS signals.