Skip to main content

Zenzic identifies ‘golden threads’ to accelerate AV roll-out

A UK organisation has identified 500 ‘milestones’ to be passed in order to get connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) on the road in numbers by 2030. Zenzic, which was set up by government and industry to coordinate a national platform for testing and developing C/AVs, has launched the UK Connected and Automated Mobility Roadmap to 2030. It identifies six ‘golden threads’ which highlight areas dependent on cross-industry collaboration to make self-driving services accessible to the public by the end of
September 12, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

A UK organisation has identified 500 ‘milestones’ to be passed in order to get connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) on the road in numbers by 2030.

Zenzic, which was set up by government and industry to coordinate a national platform for testing and developing C/AVs, has launched the UK Connected and Automated Mobility %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external Roadmap false https://zenzic.io/roadmap/ false false%> to 2030.

It identifies six ‘golden threads’ which highlight areas dependent on cross-industry collaboration to make self-driving services accessible to the public by the end of the next decade.

Top of the list is cyber resilience, with Zenzic suggesting that one major goal must be “to focus on resilience in the event of a cyber failure or threat rather than trying to build an unbreakable system”.

Legislation and regulation, public acceptability, infrastructure and safety – including the sharing of safety critical data vehicle-to-vehicle – are among the other key areas it identifies. Many of these are inter-dependent, such as the clear link between AV safety and whether people are going to be confident about using them.

“Societal outcomes must be at the centre of our planning,” Zenzic says. “To date, a vehicle-centric focus has been adopted to progress self-driving technology.” Instead, the focus should be on “thinking today about how technology and services will benefit society at large in 2030”.

The document goes through what is required in four main sections - society and people, vehicles, infrastructure and services – and in particular highlights the role of cybersecurity, saying that the UK is “at the forefront” of this technology, on which “half of the roadmap” depends.

Collaboration is the key, the roadmap insists: “If all the activity in the roadmap was scheduled sequentially with no parallel efforts, it would take until 2079 for the UK to benefit from self-driving vehicles on the roads.”

To speed things up, there must be cooperation between industry, academia and government in the UK. The document suggests 2025 will mark the ‘tipping point’ when the UK “switches gears from trial and development of the technology to the scaling up of its deployment”.

Thereafter, “advances in vehicle licencing, vehicle insurance and a tidal change in desirability in the public eye” means that more commercial passenger services will emerge.

Related Content

  • February 13, 2019
    Zero-emission transport at centre of Democrat ‘Green New Deal’
    Clean and affordable transportation and zero-emission vehicle infrastructure are at the heart of the US Democrats’ ‘Green New Deal’ package. The proposals seek to move the US away from fossil fuels and other sources of emissions that cause global warming within the next decade. The package says these goals can be reached by reached by a ten-year “national mobilisation” which include an overhaul in transportation systems to eliminate pollution and greenhouse as much as technologically feasible, repai
  • August 15, 2019
    LA launches own ‘Green New Deal’
    Los Angeles, once a temple to the automobile, has followed the Democrats in launching its own Green New Deal – and the city has made big pledges on urban mobility investment The Democratic Party has started something. The Green New Deal, one of whose most high-profile supporters is new congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, intends to persuade the public that swift action is necessary to combat climate change. Now the city of Los Angeles has followed suit, releasing what it calls ‘LA’s Green New Deal’.
  • April 18, 2019
    Quarter of Brits ‘would fund smart city solutions from tax’
    Almost a quarter (24%) of British people would be willing to fund smart city solutions using their own tax contributions, according to new research from ATG Access. Part of road barrier specialist ATG’s ‘Smart cities: Turning the dream into a reality’ report, the research found that more than half (57%) would be happy for their tax to go towards smart traffic lights, and 44% for smarter signs which give real-time traffic updates. Nearly a quarter (24%) said they would also be willing to fund smart barrie
  • August 8, 2018
    Regulation time-lag will hit driverless technology hard says leading consultancy BDO
    The legislation surrounding driverless cars is lagging so far behind the technology involved that the industry is unlikely to see a regulatory framework in place any time soon says leading international business, finance and taxation consultancy BDO. And IEEE, "the world’s largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity" can only see problems ahead as the politicians fall further and further behind. BDO has been looking at a report from www.Spectr