In the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications: Readiness of V2V Technology for Application report, researchers evaluated vehicle equipment cost scenarios including aftermarket:

• Retrofit: connects to the vehicle’s data bus, sends and receives Basic Safety Message (BSM), and provides advisories/warnings
• Self-contained: does not connect to the vehicle’s data bus and only uses a wire to get power from the vehicle, sends and receives BSM, and provides advisories/warnings
• Vehicle Awareness Device: uses a wire to get power from the vehicle, sends out but does not receive BSM, and does not provide advisories/warnings

Two suppliers provided confidential cost estimates for these three types of aftermarket devices. NHTSA asked them to provide estimates assuming both that they were sold individually, and in groups of 1,000 units to retailers or to other large purchasers. NHTSA developed likely estimated costs for these three types of aftermarket devices, using these estimates and other NHTSA estimates based on the same rationales used previously to estimate new vehicle costs. The next three tables show the estimated consumer costs.
Basic assumptions used in each of these estimates are:

• For aftermarket devices sold individually, they assumed a markup factor of 1.5 from variable costs to consumer costs;
• For aftermarket devices sold as an order of 1,000 or more products, they assumed a markup factor of 1.3 from variable costs to consumer costs;
• That the learning curve will apply to aftermarket devices also, since their main components will be the same as the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) components of Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) transmitter/receiver and antenna.

Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3 provide the estimated consumer component costs and weight for all three aftermarket device types. These are just equipment costs and do not include the costs of installing the equipment into used vehicles.

Table 1 Estimated Consumer Cost of Aftermarket Equipment – Retrofit Device (2012 dollars)

Table 2 Estimated Consumer Cost of Aftermarket Equipment – Self-Contained Device (2012 dollars)

Table 3 Estimated Consumer Cost of Aftermarket Equipment – Vehicle Awareness Device (2012 dollars)

This report, dated August 2014, includes many more details of connected vehicle system costs. These findings along with the costs provide a valuable resource for those considering the implementation of connected vehicle systems.