A new platooning model for connected and autonomous vehicles to improve string stability

The paper states two claims: (i) P-OVM is always linearly stable on a ring (Theorem 3.2), and (ii) for T-OVM there is a stability threshold (a+b)^2/a > 2 V'(h) for N large enough (Theorem 3.3). The proof for P-OVM in the paper only analyzes the 2-vehicle subsystem (y1,yN) and then posits an ansatz for the rest (eqs. (8)–(14)) without a full eigenanalysis, so it is incomplete; nevertheless, the conclusion is likely true . For T-OVM, the appendix explicitly relies on an informal N→∞ argument and says a more rigorous proof is future work (eqs. (27)–(30)), so this part is also incomplete . By contrast, the model gives a complete spectral decomposition for P-OVM (showing all coupling eigenvalues are real and nonpositive, hence all nontrivial modes are stable) and a plausible, more detailed bulk–boundary perturbation argument for T-OVM that recovers the same stability threshold; despite a minor inconsistency in the leader’s damping in one line of the linearization, the model’s conclusions and derivations are essentially correct and stronger than the paper’s. The baseline OVM stability threshold a > 2V'(h) is consistent across both sources (Appendix A) .