The Government has announced the winners of funding to upgrade the testing infrastructure for connected- and autonomous-vehicle (CAV) technology.
Four consortia have been selected in this first round, led by Horiba MIRA, Millbrook Proving Ground, TRL and the Warwick Manufacturing Group.
A total of £51 million of funding is available for creating the environments needed to fully test CAV technology.
Horiba MIRA (Nuneaton) will build a new site alongside its existing vehicle test tracks, where automated vehicles can be tested at the limits of their speed and handling to ensure that they are safe.
Millbrook Proving Ground (Bedfordshire) and Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE — based in the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire) will set up a range of different test areas that mimic increasingly realistic city driving environments, where automated vehicles can be tested before being taken onto public roads.
Two projects will adapt real-world locations for testing automated vehicles in live traffic. TRL will lead a project to set up two live test environments in London (in Greenwich and at Stratford’s Olympic Park), while Warwick Manufacturing Group will set up real-world test environments in Coventry and Birmingham.
Reflecting the UK’s ability to compete globally in this hotly contested sector, Jim Hackett — president and CEO of Ford Motor Co — recently opened Ford Europe’s Smart Mobility Innovation Office at the Olympic Park.
It will initially host 40 specialists, brought together to develop smart mobility technologies for cities. All these CAV projects will be fully operational within the next 18-24 months.
Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark (pictured) said: “Combining ambitious new technologies and innovative business models to address social and economic challenges lies at the heart of the Government’s Industrial Strategy.
Accelerating CAV technology development is central to achieving this ambition and will help to ensure that the UK is one of the world’s ‘go to’ locations to develop this sector.
These projects form part of a globally unique cluster running from our automotive heartlands in the West Midlands, down through our innovation centres in Oxfordshire and Milton Keynes, and through to London.
To achieve this, Government and industry are working together to create the world’s most effective CAV-testing ‘eco-system,’ integrating existing proving grounds and public-road test sites across the UK’s existing automotive sector, strengthening existing capabilities and creating new ones.”