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TROY, MI – Auto makers for years have talked about technology that would enable vehicles to speak to one another and the surrounding infrastructure, but to date nothing has emerged.

Industry insiders on hand here for a panel discussion hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Connected Vehicle Trade Assn., say technology needed to do this is rolling out in cars and smartphones operated by millions of consumers every day.

But that technology – used to deliver traffic warnings, provide turn-by-turn directions and deliver live sports scores – isn’t reliable enough yet for full-scale vehicle-to-vehicle communication, say the panel participants.

“You can’t guarantee the operation of those systems in the car,” Hideki Hada, manager of the integrated vehicle system department at the Toyota Technical Center in Ann Arbor, MI, tells Ward’s.

“They may increase the awareness of consumers about the future of connected vehicles, but our focus is more on the safety side,” he says. “And you can’t use cell phones and Wi-Fi for safety. You can claim it, but you can’t be confident.”

Tom Schaffnit, an advanced safety system engineer for American Honda Motor Co. Inc., is blunter in his assessment of the limitations today’s technologies have when it comes to improving safety.

“When you call somebody on the phone (in another vehicle), that’s V2V,” he says. “But if you’re trying to do this for safety and your radar sees somebody you’re about to run into, how do you call them, you don’t know their number. These are things people have to (work) through.”

Typically when pundits speak about V2V, or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology, they’re referring to a standardized means of communication, either from vehicle to vehicle or vehicle to roadway.