AbstractThe increase in vehicles leads to various social problems, such as traffic jams and traffic accidents, and platooning control of automated vehicles is a potential solution to improve transportation efficiency. Platooning control schemes are highly dependent on the exchange of information between vehicles. In this paper, a weighted try‐once‐discard (WTOD) protocol alongside the deployment of a pull strategy is developed to remove the continuous monitoring for all neighbor information, thereby reducing the communication burden. A platooning controller is then constructed by adequately considering this communication protocol and a constant‐time headway spacing that is adjusted dynamically based on the relative velocity of the vehicles. By relying on the Lyapunov stability theory, a sufficient condition is established to check that the addressed vehicle system is capable of realizing the predetermined platoon within a finite‐time horizon. In addition, a parameterized condition, which is characterized by linear matrix inequalities, is obtained to determine the desired gain of the controllers. Finally, a set of simulations is utilized to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.