The vehicular Internet of Things (IoT) comprises enabling technologies for a large number of important applications including collaborative autonomous driving and advanced transportation systems. Due to the mobility of vehicles, strict application requirements, and limited communication resources, the conventional centralized control fails to provide sufficient quality of service for connected vehicles, so a decentralized approach is required in the vicinity to satisfy the requirements of delay-sensitive and mission-critical applications. A decentralized system is also more resistant to the single point of failure problem and malicious attacks. Blockchain technology has been attracting great interest due to its capability of achieving a decentralized, transparent, and tamper-resistant system. There are many studies focusing on the use of blockchain in managing data and transactions in vehicular environments. However, the application of blockchain in vehicular environments also faces some technical challenges. In this paper, we first explain the fundamentals of blockchain and vehicular IoT. Then, we conduct a literature review on the existing research efforts of the blockchain for vehicular IoT by discussing the research problems and technical issues. After that, we point out some future research issues considering the characteristics of both blockchain and vehicular IoT.

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a network that connects vehicles and everything. IoV shares traffic data by connecting vehicles with the surrounding environment, which brings huge potential to people’s life. However, a large number of connections and data sharing will seriously consume vehicle resources during the interaction. In addition, how to build a safe and reliable connection to ensure vehicle safety is also an issue to consider. To solve the above problems, researchers introduce blockchains into IoV to build a safe and reliable vehicle network relying on the distributed account structure, immutable, transparent and security features of blockchains. We have investigated the application of blockchains in IoV in recent years, and have summarized and compared these studies according to their purposes. On this basis, we also point out the future trends and opportunities.

The cruising range of an electric vehicle is limited by its battery. Reducing the energy consumption of MES (main energy systems) or AES (auxiliary energy systems) of the vehicle battery is an effective means to increase the electric vehicle cruising range. Platoon driving can greatly reduce the wind resistance of the vehicle and then reduce the energy consumption of MES for electric vehicles. This paper proposes an adaptive communication energy optimization scheme based on road curvature radius to save the energy of AES for the electric vehicle platoon on curved roads. In this paper, the inter-vehicle distance error based on the car-like model in a two-dimensional space is established. Then, the inter-vehicle distance error is used to design a control law K to accomplish successful platooning. Next, three platooning control schemes based on different information flow topologies are discussed. Finally, the consensus of three platooning control schemes and the energy consumption of electric vehicle communication systems are analyzed by MATLAB’s Simulink. Simulation results show that the communication energy optimization scheme reduces the power consumption of AES as long as the platoon driving on curved roads.

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In order to satisfy new normal life styles in the post-COVID-19 era, an efficient information and communication technology (ICT) framework is required to collect, process, and utilize data for the purpose of satisfying increasing user demand in communications and computing while providing a functionality of responding quickly to pandemic. We propose an ICT framework that is capable to support diverse application requirements based on ambient communication, resilient computing, and agile control technologies. Computer simulations are conducted to evaluate the fundamental functionalities of the proposed framework by using a case study where data are exchanged and processed among different network entities in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) empowered vehicular environments. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can outperform existing baselines in various conditions.