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The region is in a race against a host of countries in a bid to become the world leader in the development of driverless cars, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street has said.

It was today (Tuesday) announced that a consortium of organisations from both the public and private sectors will be developing 50 miles of roads across Birmingham and Coventry for the project.

It will be the largest, most diverse testing environment in the UK.

(Image: Rui Vieira/PA Wire)

"Everything that's coming up in the West Midlands is of course exciting, but this is equally as exciting because it's the future of the West Midlands," Mr Street said.

"This is a global race for which country leads in this new technology, and I am absolutely clear that the West Midlands has to lead in that area.

"We are in a race against the US, against Germany, against China, so I think it's very important that we are really outstanding in this area."

While there is no clear timeline for when we can expect to see this network of roads rolled out across the region, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Greg Clark says he expects to see driverless cars on our roads by 2021.

Plans involve connecting the University of Warwick campus with Coventry city centre, with links from there to Birmingham and Solihull. There will also be links to the future developments around HS2 and Birmingham Airport.

All of this was made possible after the West Midlands was awarded £51 million by the Government back in October for winning a competition to create the environments needed to fully test CAV (Connected and Autonomous Vehicles) technology.

And Mr Street says this is an indication of just how important becoming a world leader in the new technology is to the West Midlands.

"We're also very pleased that the funding for this came from a competition that the West Midlands did particularly well in at the end of last year.

(Image: Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire)

"We got about half of the national funding that was available in various forms across the West Midlands, which really illustrates how important it was to us.

"The fact we've got these trials here I would say gives us a nice head start in that race but there's many, many fences still to clear.

"But we're in a great position internationally."

The project is being headed by Midlands Future Mobility, a consortium of industry and academic experts, while funding is provided by a host of industrial partners.

The eight partners which make up the consortium are WMG, Amey, AVL, Costain, Coventry University, HORIBA MIRA, WIG, TfWM, funded by industrial partners and by Innovate UK via Meridian.