The existing spacing policies in autonomous vehicle platoon control have the disadvantages of poor flexibility and insufficient road utilization, therefore, an information consensus based platoon control algorithm with varying inter-vehicle space is proposed. Firstly, a new inter-vehicle spacing policy, namely time varying headway(TVH) strategy, is designed according to the dynamic relationship between vehicle speed and braking time. Then, a vehicle platoon control algorithm based on the information consensus theory is proposed to achieve the adaptive variation of inter-vehicle space with vehicle speed. The simulation results show that the control algorithm can not only realize the platoon for autonomous vehicles with time varying inter-vehicle distance, but also has better flexibility in vehicle platoon control. Particularly, in low speed, the algorithm can greatly reduce road occupancy as well as improving road utilization rate.