Smart Road to Parked Car: Talk to Me

Smart Road to Parked Car: Talk to Me - IEEE Spectrum:
"When cars start talking both to one another and to traffic signals, they will sometimes suffer from the cellphone user’s bane: dropped calls.
That’s because there won’t always be enough cars roaming around to serve as partners or relays.
So why not have access to parked cars?
They’re shiny, they’re rested, and they are there precisely when you need them most—when few cars are plying the roads.
Until now, most concepts for smart roads have planned to fill gaps in the chain of communication with relay stations.
You find such roadside units, as they’re called, in Japan and in parts of Europe.
The problem is, each one carries an upfront cost of around US $50,000, according [PDF] to the U.S. General Accounting Office.
Throw in maintenance and amortization and the annual cost can average $18,000.
“That’s why the U.S. government hasn’t deployed them massively,” says Ozan Tonguz, a professor of electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh.
Tonguz hopes to get around the weak infrastructure by wringing more networking power out of the cars themselves.
“The idea is that once people park their cars, this amenity is already there for others..."