A user equipment (UE) determines sidelink resources for use in vehicle wireless communications. Initial beam establishment uses a Sidelink Synchronization Signal (SLSS), a Sidelink Channel State Information Reference Signal (SL-CSI-RS), or a Sidelink Demodulation Reference Signal (SL-DMRS). Beam refinement may then be conducted either by UEs in communication with each other, or by just one of the UEs. A base station such as a gNB may assign resources for a dedicated sidelink carrier or a shared licensed sidelink carrier, e.g., dynamically, as pre-configured by RRC, or based on activation and deactivation. In such cases, initial beam establishment and refinement may include gNB controlled beam forming at a connectionless stage, gNB controlled beam forming at connection stage with scheduling DCI transmitted to Tx UE only, or gNB controlled beam forming at connection stage with scheduling DCI transmitted to both Tx UE and Rx UE.