Road freight transportation demand will further increase in the coming years. This leads to challenges for the freight sector such as steadily increasing energy consumption and coping with limited traffic system capacity. One answer to these challenges is cooperative vehicle platooning. Related state-of-the-art vehicle automation technologies can increase traffic throughput, improve road safety, and reduce fuel consumption [1], [2]. We developed a holistic distributed control concept to enable tight vehicle spacing and efficient platoon maneuvers with the option of utilizing vehicle-to-vehicle communication while providing collision safety at all times. This innovative platoon control architecture combines trajectory optimization and local model-predictive control of each vehicle.