Gardner Mulls Spectrum Availability During Senate Energy Committee Hearing
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., raised spectrum availability as a key transportation consideration Thursday during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on automotive industry innovation. “We have questions of spectrum,” said Gardner, who last year formed a Smart Transportation…
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Caucus with Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. “How are cars going to be able to communicate with each other? Do we have enough spectrum to make sure cars can communicate with each other?” Gardner, a member of the Commerce Committee, has been involved in the spectrum legislation debates happening in that committee and referred to the issue of spectrum as one of the relevant questions that “go beyond” the Senate Energy Committee. He mentioned the problem of traffic jams in Colorado. “The solutions that we have to look for are being talked about on this panel -- vehicle-to-vehicle communication and alternative transportation methods and modes,” Gardner said. He asked National Renewable Energy Laboratory Transportation and Hydrogen Systems Center Director Chris Gearhart about how connected vehicles may ease congestion. “I can’t give you an answer right now,” Gearhart said, citing the efforts to find out and predicting a “big” effect. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers CEO Mitch Bainwol said connected vehicles' "technical communications systems that rely on wireless spectrum allocated for public safety are designed to allow vehicles to communicate with one another and the environment around them to enhance safety and eliminate congestion in our cities and on our highways,” in written testimony. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration "estimates connected vehicle technology could potentially mitigate or eliminate up to 80 percent of crash scenarios involving non-impaired drivers. The implications are profound, and justify why both automakers and the government have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the development of connected vehicle technologies.” David Friedman, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, testified that connected and automated vehicles “are expected to have important impacts on transportation energy use, though key questions remain on whether those impacts will be positive or negative.” His office “has partnered with the University of Michigan, and both Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories to examine how drivers interact with different technologies in connected vehicles, including whether or not those technologies help them" drive more efficiently he said in his testimony.