In this paper, we describe the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel multi-vehicle merge maneuver for a decentralized platooning system named Adaptive Decentralized Emergent-behavior PlaTooning’s (ADEPT), which is inspired by the “emergent behavior” of some processes found in nature. Performance evaluation results considering a variety of maneuvering scenarios show that the proposed emergent-based approach to multivehicle merging yields lower overall maneuver latency compared to centralized platooning merge. We also show that the proposed emergent-based multi-vehicle merge results in lower overhead when compared to centralized merge, and is thus able to more efficiently use network resources. Finally, due to its emergent-based bottom-up approach to platooning, maneuvers are significantly less complex to implement since they are based on a relatively small set of simple rules that can be used by all maneuvers.