In this paper, a longitudinal control of the lead vehicle for a platoon in IVHS Regulation Layer is proposed. The backstepping method has been used for the controller design. This method has an advantage in that its stability need not be proven since the controller is designed based on the Lyapunov Function. The control object is that the lead vehicle tracks a reference velocity and maintains a safe distance between the inter-platoons while the followers are keeping the speed of the lead vehicle of a platoon. The coordinate of system is transformed to a new coordinate system for its convenience to design controller. The new coordinate system is composed of error and new error variable. The error is the difference between the safe distance and the actual distance of inter-platoons. A new error variable is the difference between the velocity of vehicle and the estimated state of a system operated by the virtual input. The Lyapunov function is obtained based on the variables of new coordinate system. In the computer simulation, several cases have been studied such as when the lead vehicle is tracking the optimal speed. or a lead vehicle of the following platoon tracks the velocity of the previous platoon while maintaining a safe distance. Also a nonlinear engine time constant case has been investigated. All the simulation results show that the designed controller satisfies the control object sufficiently.