It might seem sci-fi at the moment, but your car could soon “talk” to other vehicles on the road, if a government plan works out. Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has said India intends to make vehicle-to-vehicle communication, or V2V, mandatory in new cars this year. The tech has the capability to reduce fatalities in a country where over 170,000 people die every year in road accidents.
V2V allows cars to communicate directly with other nearby cars using short-range wireless signals. Vehicles broadcast basic information like speed, direction, braking status and receive the same from others in close proximity. “If my car and your car are meeting at an intersection, both cars get an alert,” says Krishna Kumar, managing director and automotive head at Samsung-owned Harman India, which has been working on V2V for some time.
The system does not rely on mobile networks or the internet. Instead, it works like a walkie-talkie between vehicles, operating on a dedicated, unlicensed spectrum band. Alerts are meant to give drivers a few extra seconds to slow down.
The company’s product passed “start of production” with one automaker, meaning cars rolled off the line with the technology built in. Yet, adoption hasn’t taken off. “For V2V to work, everyone needs to have it. If only one car has it, it’s of no use,” says Kumar.
The technology itself is not new. Variants of V2V have existed for more than two decades. The US tested it as early as 2017 and wanted to mandate it, but pulled the plug on it later.
“In Europe, ADAS [Advanced Driver Assistance Systems] and V2V are not really about safety. It is more about traffic regulation,” says Atul Chandel, strategy director at automotive consultancy Autobei Consulting Group. “For India, safety is the main concern.”
Infrastructure, scale and readiness are some of the barriers to large-scale adoption in India. Testing alone can take years. “I’m not convinced that India can roll it out this year. It will require a lot of work,” says Chandel.
The government estimates the cost for on-board units will be ₹5,000 to ₹7,000 per vehicle. There’s no clarity on who will bear the cost burden.
Companies like Netradyne focus on AI-based, camera-driven systems in freight and logistics sector. Using outward- and inward-facing cameras and machine learning models, such systems detect speeding, distracted driving, drowsiness, pedestrian risks and more, says Durgadutt Nedungadi, senior vice president, EMEA & APAC-business at Netradyne.
The results, according to Nedungadi, are tangible. Large fleet customers report accident rates falling by as much as 50 percent.
First Published: Feb 12, 2026, 16:25
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