For more than three years, the Nissan team developed the project with research lead Jonathan Lee from Professor Alexandre Bayen’s lab at UC Berkeley. Another substantial challenge they faced was adjusting for human behavior. For example, when one of the test vehicles begins gently slowing down ahead of a traffic jam, its driver might try to override the system and “fill the gap” between it and upcoming traffic.

“In order to make this more acceptable to the human driver, we’re trying to enhance the vehicle interface to let the driver know why we’re slowing down,” said Joy Carpio, a researcher at Nissan’s Silicon Valley office.

The team said educating people about CCM and helping them understand how it can help them save time and money is critical. “It requires cooperation. If drivers don’t accept the solution, it will be difficult to implement,” Carpio said.

The Future?

When will communicating cars start to impact traffic everywhere? While the team cannot yet say when the technology will be implemented at scale, the fact that it’s already showing results in real-world testing is promising.