Self-driving cars: Government plans more funding and new code of practise

£20m of extra funding to go into new research and development of autonomous cars

The British self-driving vehicle industry will benefit from a further £20m of Government investment

Britain’s self-driving car research industry will receive a further boost from the Government in an attempt to turn the UK into a world leader in the technology, it was announced today.

£20m will go into a competitive fund, to be matched by industry organisations, and to be spent on collaborative research and development into audi/news/on-the-motorway-in-a-self-driving-car.html" target="_blank">self-driving vehicles.

The money will come from the £100m set aside in the Spring 2015 Budget for research into intelligent mobility.

Research organisations will bid for a share of the fund with proposals on safety, reliability, communication between vehicles, and the impact of driverless cars on the elderly.

In addition to the money, the Government also revealed that it plans to introduce a code of practice for the self-driving vehicle industry, which it says will provide guidelines on safely testing self-driving vehicles in real-life situations and creating more sophisticated versions of the vehicles already in existence. 

The industry has already benefitted from £19m of investment from the Government

The new fund more than doubles the amount ministers have already pledged to invest in the industry, first offering £10m to develop a UK testing infrastructure for self-driving cars, then a further £9m to help run trials in four British towns.

The Government hopes that the funding will help to push Britain to the forefront of the industry developing self-driving vehicles.

Currently Ford and Jaguar Land Rover are involved with testing self-driving cars in conjunction with the UK Autodrive programme, while the Gateway scheme in Greenwich is testing driverless passenger shuttles, and the Venturer consortium researches public acceptance of the technology, as well as the legal and safety implications.

Sajid Javid, the business secretary, said: “To boost productivity Britain will need to capitalise on new technologies like driverless vehicles, securing high skilled jobs for those who want to work hard and get on, and contributing to a more prosperous future for the whole of the country.

“Our world beating automotive industry, strengths in innovation and light touch regulatory approach to testing driverless technology combine to make the UK market competitive and an attractive destination for investors".