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The government's latest budget will include new measures and incentives to support the growth of autonomous car technology in the UK.

Unveiling the budget on Wednesday, chancellor George Osborne will announce that driverless cars will be tested on UK motorways as soon as next year.


According to The Guardian, which has been briefed on the budget, the chancellor will claim that the technology could represent "the most fundamental change to transport since the invention of the internal combustion engine."

The announcement is one of a number of measures that Osborne says will put Britain in a position to "lead the world in new technologies and infrastructure."

Funding for driverless car trials will come from the government's Intelligent Mobility Fund, announced earlier this year, which has £100 million budget to invest in a range of new innovations in transport.

Currently, £20 million of the fund has been allocated to eight autonomous vehicle projects, ranging from driverless shuttles for disabled people to the development of autonomous vehicle testing centres.


The first fully autonomous vehicles are due to come to London in July. The electric pods, developed by the GATEway group, will be located at Greenwich Peninsula, where they'll service local residential areas and the O2 Arena. The system has been used at Heathrow Terminal 5 for the last five years, where they run on tracks. Each pod can carry six passengers, although one will be a steward who can send out an alert in case of emergency.

In Milton Keynes, two-seater electric LUTZ Pathfinder pods are being trialled in pedestrian areas. They have a maximum speed of 15mph, although they're designed to go more slowly if they detect congestion. Following piloted trials to help the puds understand the layout of the urban environment, an extended program will see 40 fully autonomous pods used in both Milton Keynes and Coventry.

The Venturer Consortium is carrying out similar work in Bristol, involving full-sized road vehicles. Meanwhile, in February's Pathway to Driverless Cars report, the Department for Transport praised the Oxford Mobile Robotics Group’s autonomous Nissan Leaf, while Nissan has announced that its first driverless car, the Qashqai crossover, will be built in Sunderland.