Landmark moment for autonomous cars

The UK is conducting its largest ever road test of autonomous vehicles today.

Coventry is hosting the UK Autodrive project, which is a collaborative group comprising of Jaguar Land Rover, Ford and Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC) . The connected vehicles out on the streets of Coventry are communicating with each other and the local infrastructure, including traffic lights.

“The fundamental purpose of UK Autodrive is to get connected and autonomous vehicle technology out onto UK roads, so the start of trialling on the streets of Coventry is clearly a major landmark both for the project and for the UK as a whole,” said Tim Armitage, Arup’s UK Autodrive project director.

TMETC and Jaguar Land Rover are using the opportunity to hone their driverless tech in real conditions, with more testing planned for early 2018.

We have started the UK’s first public trials of #connected and #selfdriving cars. This is an exciting step closer to future technologies which will reduce congestion and most importantly, improve safety. #Coventry now joins just 12 cities world-wide in public trials #UKAutodrive pic.twitter.com/IZpweJr7FG

— Jaguar Land Rover (@JLR_News) November 17, 2017