Driverless cars will be on UK roads within four years, says minister

Fully driverless cars will enter the UK in three to four years, says transport secretary Chris Grayling at the Conservative Party conference in the city of Birmingham. A report by Reuters says Grayling is committed to ending the sale of new diesel and petrol cars by 2040. “Newer diesel cars today are cleaner than ever before and of course there will be a role for diesel for many years to come as technology evolves,” Grayling adds. However, OpenText has carried out a survey of 2,000 UK consumers,
October 4, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
Fully driverless cars will enter the UK in three to four years, says transport secretary Chris Grayling at the Conservative Party conference in the city of Birmingham.

 
A report by %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external Reuters false https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-autos-grayling/uk-will-see-truly-driverless-cars-on-roads-in-three-to-four-years-minister-idUKKCN1MB26S false false%> says Grayling is committed to ending the sale of new diesel and petrol cars by 2040.
 
“Newer diesel cars today are cleaner than ever before and of course there will be a role for diesel for many years to come as technology evolves,” Grayling adds.
 
However, OpenText has carried out a survey of 2,000 UK consumers, in which over half of the respondents say they would never consider buying or renting a driverless car.
 
The business information company says six out ten respondents think driverless/autonomous cars will eventually outnumber manually-driven vehicles.
 
A third of participants believe there will be more driverless/autonomous cars on the road than traditional cars in the next 10-15 years. This view was held by 66% of respondents to a similar OpenText survey in 2017.
 
Also, the number of UK citizens comfortable with being a passenger in a driverless car has dropped from 24% in 2017 to 19% in this year's results.
 
Just under a quarter of participants believe autonomous vehicles (AV) will improve road safety compared to 42% of consumers who responded in 2017.
 
One in ten participants think the technology will make roads safer on UK motorways, the company adds.  
 
Mark Bridger, senior vice president, Europe, OpenText, says the more ‘game-changing’ artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as AVs will take longer to be accepted.
 
“AI will enable automakers to analyse, adapt, and suggest solutions based on data. As AVs become more common, the data they produce will become a new, powerful asset for organisations,” Bridger adds.
 
Automotive companies need to ensure the technology is safe and reliable in order to install the necessary level of trust for mass adoption, he concludes.

Related Content

  • Bosch to trial driverless tech on Australia’s high-speed rural roads
    January 24, 2019
    Bosch has received an automated driving system (ADS) permit from the Victorian government to test automated vehicle technology on high-speed rural roads in the south-eastern Australian state. Bosch is to use a $2.3 million grant from the Connected and Automated Vehicle (C/AV) Trial Grants Programme to develop the technology, which will be tested later this year. The C/AV programme funded through the government’s $1.4 million Towards Zero Action Plan – an initiative which provides guidelines on how V
    Read More
  • Autumn budget: EV charging infrastructure fund and higher tax rates for diesel vehicles
    November 23, 2017
    Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has announced a £400m ($532m) charging infrastructure fund for electric vehicles (EVs), an extra £100m ($133m) investment in Plug-In-Car Grant, and a £40m ($53m) in charging R&D in the UK’s Autumn Budget 2017. He added that laws need to be clarified so that motorists who charge their EVs at work will not face a benefit-in-kind charge from next year.
    Read More
  • ComfortDelGro to deploy MaaS Global app in Singapore
    October 10, 2018
    Transport company ComfortDelGro is trialling MaaS Global’s Whim app in Singapore. The Finnish mobility company secured a €9m funding round for the app in August to support its ambition in revolutionising the way people move. ComfortDelGro says the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) app’s users will be able to access its fleet of taxis as well as transition from a train or a bus or choose to finish the trip on a bicycle. Kaj Pyyhtiä, MaaS Global co-founder, says the company will use the initiative to enter
    Read More
  • Self-driving bus collides with pedestrian in Vienna
    July 24, 2019
    A self-driving bus trial in the Austrian capital Vienna has been halted after a collision between a vehicle and pedestrian, says Bloomberg. Authorities are now investing the cause of the incident which led to minor injuries. According to Bloomberg, state broadcaster ORF says the Navya vehicle was driving at 7.5 miles per hour when it hit the 30-year-old woman in the knee. In a statement given to The Verge, Navya said witnesses had seen the pedestrian wearing headphones and looking at a mobile phon
    Read More

Highlighted Content