NXP Named Partner of U.S. Department of Transportation for Vehicle-to-X Communications in Smart City Challenge

Winning city to receive life-saving, intelligent traffic management technology from NXP, enabling real-time vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication

AUSTIN, Texas, March 11, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — (SXSW Interactive 2016) — NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ:NXPI) today announced it has joined the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge as a provider of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) technology. With this partnership, NXP, together with its partner Cohda Wireless, will provide the contest’s winning community with wireless technology that allows cars to securely exchange data, such as hazard warnings, over distances of more than a mile to prevent accidents and improve traffic flow.

The Smart City Challenge is a nationwide competition set to award the winning, medium-sized U.S. city a prize of $50 million through the Department of Transportation and its partners, for that city’s ideas to develop the connected city of the future and address the challenges that growing populations present to transportation infrastructure. As part of NXP’s partnership with the Department of Transportation, the winning city will also receive advanced NXP technologies, including V2X systems engineered to dramatically enhance the future of transportation.

“Our partnership with NXP will help push the boundaries of what is possible in cities across America,” said U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “V2X technology holds the potential to deliver truly profound benefits for the Smart City Challenge winner, its transportation systems, and most importantly, for its citizens.”

Marking a key milestone of the competition, NXP CEO and President Rick Clemmer tomorrow will outline his company’s partnership with the Department of Transportation prior to introducing Secretary Foxx at a SXSW Interactive ceremony in Austin, Texas, where the contests’ top five finalist cities will be disclosed.

“The Smart City Challenge is a bold and visionary program that shortens the path towards the development of safer, cleaner and more sustainable communities,” said Clemmer. “We are pleased to participate in this program by providing secure, intelligent traffic management solutions that can potentially help avoid countless road accidents and fatalities each year on U.S. roads and alleviate traffic jams in U.S. cities.”

NXP’s V2X RoadLINK^TM chipsets are among the technologies to be provided to the contest’s winning community. RoadLINK allows drivers to “see” around corners, and through traffic obstacles such as big trucks ahead. The technology also allows cars to ‘talk’ to traffic lights and give priority to emergency vehicles, truck platoons, buses or other priority means of transport. RoadLINK additionally protects against illegal attacks with NXP’s V2X hardware security technology.

NXP and its partner Cohda Wireless will jointly provide V2X modules and development tools to the contest’s winning community. As part of the NXP RoadLINK™ chipset, the modules incorporate firmware from Cohda Wireless and efficiently run Cohda’s V2X application software on NXP’s i.MX 6Solo applications processor. The NXP/Cohda technology will be on the road later this year in the first production cars by a major OEM.