Ford has been issued a patent for "Apparatus and methods […] for vehicle-to-vehicle cooperation to marshal traffic." The patent indicates that Ford is seeking to use cryptocurrency technology as a means for cars to communicate with each other whilst on the road – with the patent describing a "Cooperatively Managed Merge and Pass (CMMP) system" that uses "CMMP tokens" to facilitate inter-vehicle communications.

Ford Granted Patent for "Vehicle-to-Vehicle" Communication System

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has published a document granting Ford Global Technologies, LLC patent number 9,928,746 for "Apparatus and methods" designed to facilitate "vehicle-to-vehicle cooperation to marshal traffic." The intended utility of the new technology is the alleviation of traffic congestion through using communication between vehicles to facilitate the cooperative coordination of "platoons" of vehicles.

The patent states that Ford disclosed an example of the technology in the form of a "vehicle-to-vehicle communication module and an example cooperative adaptive cruise control module." The document notes that the "cooperative adaptive cruise control module determines a location of a traffic cataract," and also "coordinates with other cooperative vehicles to form a platoon of standard vehicles," with the cooperative module "coordinat[ing] with other cooperative vehicles to move the formed platoon through traffic cataract at a constant speed."

Cryptocurrency Technology to Facilitate Inter-Vehicle Communications

The document describes a "Cooperatively Managed Merge and Pass (CMMP) system," which utilizes cryptocurrency technology in order to facilitate communications between vehicles.