UK government awards £51m to driverless car testing infrastructure projects

The four projects, which are led by HORIBA MIRA; Millbrook Proving Ground; TRL and the Warwick Manufacturing Group are the first to be funded from the government’s £100m Connected and Autonomous Vehicles testing infrastructure programme which was announced in November 2016.  The government funding will be matched by investment from industry.

HORIBA MIRA in 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 they are safe. Meanwhile, the Millbrook Proving Ground in 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 mimicking increasingly realistic city driving environments.

The other two projects to win a share of the funding are looking at testing automated vehicles in live traffic. The TRL led Smart Mobility Living Lab initiative will set up live test environments in Greenwich and Stratford’s Olympic Park in London whilst Warwick Manufacturing Group UK Central CAV Testbed project will set up real world test environments in Coventry and Birmingham.