Autonomous Vehicles

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, the car industry in Britain has been an important part of our national fabric and economy since the Industrial Revolution. We have excelled in the home market in designing and manufacturing vehicles, and with our exports. This has extended to motor sport with companies such as Cosworth and the growth of advanced engineering centres around Oxford and Birmingham.

I believe that the UK now has a most interesting and exciting new opportunity—that is, to become a global centre of excellence for the development of autonomous vehicles. Much credit should go to my noble friend Lord Borwick for initiating this debate and for the work that he has undertaken in the automotive sector. I will echo much of what he has said.

The idea of a driverless car seems rather an alarming prospect and remains for many of us in the realm of science fiction. However, we can take heart from the fact that the Docklands Light Railway and some rail interconnections at airports such as Gatwick and Heathrow are driverless. We do not turn a hair in travelling on these systems. Last week, we read of the £16 billion project to upgrade and improve the London Tube rolling stock, which is planned to graduate to be driverless by 2030. Of course, here we are talking about journeying on rails. The accelerator and the brakes work automatically; we arrive safely, smoothly and on time; and we, as discerning and risk-aware individuals, have grown to trust this mode of transport.

Trust is an important theme that I will return to. First, we should start with a vision. Fast forward to 2050—a commuter will leave his home in the morning and look at the gadget on his wrist, which may include his watch. He will speak to it to call his electric car to the door. He will hop in with his Kindle or equivalent and ask his car to drive him to work. He will have come to trust that his driverless car handles all matters relating to his journey: that is, all types of road, all types of junctions, all types of weather and all manner of cyclists and pedestrians. The car drops him safely at work and goes to park itself or drives home, or, still parking itself, it drops him at an out-of-town collection point, rather like a park and ride. He hops in a driverless electric bus that takes him into the centre of town, thereby reducing pollution and protecting the environment, sharing costs and easing congestion. He will trust motorway driving as sensors will keep his vehicle a certain distance from other vehicles in front. Tail-gating may become an irritant of the past, allowing for better capacity on motorways.

Two years ago, Google posted a YouTube video showing a gentleman called Steve Mahan in California being taken on a ride in his self-driving Toyota Prius. In the video, Mr Mahan states:

“Ninety-five percent of my vision is gone, I’m well past legally blind”.

The carefully programmed route takes him from his home to a drive-through restaurant, then to the dry-cleaning shop and finally back home, so I believe that journey was not just on motorways. In May this year, Google presented a new prototype of its driverless car. It had neither a steering wheel nor pedals. It is 100% automated. In some states in the US, legislation has already been passed to allow driverless cars. Numerous other major companies and research organisations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles. The future is here.

We in Britain can be a country of global excellence in this field if we have a competitive edge on countries such as Germany, the USA, South Korea or Japan. It will require close collaboration and determination to succeed, from the academic institutions, innovators, government and business. At present, Germany is investing €200 million in advanced manufacturing and America is putting more than $1 billion dollars into rethinking manufacturing, all of which has a focus on smart technology, robotics and automated systems. The UK is investing £150 million over five years into progressing innovative solutions to manufacturing so that we are in the race to succeed globally in the so-called fourth Industrial Revolution.

We have made a positive start. The foundations for this were laid in 2010 with the industrial strategy launch and its focus on 11 key sectors and “eight great technologies”. The catapult initiatives are proving important and fruitful in translating new highly technically advanced ideas emanating from some of our great research institutions into marketable products or components. We are investing £1 billion over 10 years in the new Advanced Propulsion Centre to commercialise low-carbon technologies. The High Value Manufacturing Catapult has secured more than 1,500 projects.

The key to success for technological advance from these initiatives is effective automation from optimising the interaction between the use of robotics, smart technology and autonomous systems. It is highly significant that Innovate UK has recently awarded £1.6 million to the HyperCat consortium to promote the “internet of things”. The aim is to enable £100 billion- worth of value by 2020 in the UK by drawing together a range of the best companies and research institutions to focus on the interoperability of transportation, manufacturing, smart cities and energy. The internet of things allows for a broad range of devices, from heart monitors to kitchen appliances, to communicate with each other through wireless connections. This will have a profound beneficial effect on how we can lead our lives more efficiently.

It is from these collaborative initiatives that exciting developments in autonomous vehicles can be seen in Milton Keynes, the fastest-growing town in the United Kingdom. The strategy is interesting and distinct for its city-wide ambitions, the interconnectivity of transport systems and degree of integration. It is being progressed with the Transport Systems Catapult and the Automotive Council, together with universities. The project is designed to launch the driverless car in the form of futuristic-looking pods into Milton Keynes, three of which are being delivered in March 2015, and their number will build up to 20 or 30 in the short term. The testing will be undertaken gradually in increasingly ambitious conditions covering all types of road space and mixed pedestrian space. This intelligent mobility system deliberately tests out a move towards greater vehicle autonomy and its interaction with smart devices, other vehicles and drivers. It involves different climatic conditions and myriad scenarios that typically characterise a busy and complex transport network. A key aim, and the bigger picture for this project, is to develop a holistic approach to transport solutions—to reduce congestion, better manage parking spaces in city centres, reduce carbon emissions and enable greater efficiency in the economy by cutting down wasted time, whether by queuing or by reduced human productivity while travelling. The universities are playing a major part in this. For example, Professor Paul Newman of the robotics laboratory at Oxford University is at the leading edge of developing sensors and related technology for cars.

Sensors are linked to trust, because sensors in your mode of transport are everything, and will replace our brains—our senses—which we trust implicitly when we drive our cars. Trusting the technology is one of the biggest obstacles to the development of the truly autonomous vehicle, despite the stark fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, that 93% of accidents are the result of human error. Trust in riding an autonomous vehicle is closely linked to the insurance market. To this end, we are lucky to have a Minister on the Front Bench with much knowledge and experience of this sector, my noble friend Lord Ashton of Hyde. I welcome him most warmly to the Dispatch Box for his inaugural session. The question of where liability lies is important, as my noble friend Lord Borwick mentioned. Existing legislation will need to be carefully scrutinised and changed accordingly. This will include a redefinition of monitoring and controlling a vehicle, and allow for careful scrutiny and analysis, including the use of in-car telematics and cameras in the event of an accident. This strays into the sensitive arguments of privacy, originating with tachometers.

The testing phase will need to take some time and should build to give anyone travelling in or near to an autonomous vehicle confidence and trust—that word again—in the system and its interoperability. Yet the country that develops a mode of non-rail autonomous transport that consistently demonstrates 100% trust for the human being translating him from A to B in all conditions will lead in this race. The potential for export cannot be underestimated. To engender this trust, autonomous vehicles may need to remain semi-autonomous for years—that is, that the car is autonomous but there remains an override for instant human intervention.

I conclude by asking the Minister some questions. What is the Government’s assessment of the challenge for the insurance industry in providing comprehensive cover for autonomous vehicles? Is he confident that there is optimum action in developing autonomous vehicles across all the relevant Whitehall departments? What can the Minister say on guaranteed future investment in the catapults and initiatives such as the internet of things for advanced transport systems? Is the £10 million allocated to Innovate UK sufficient for the planned trials in cities? How aware are we of the competition internationally to develop this technology? Are we up to speed or, to put another pun, are we in the slow lane?

The UK must be sure to retain its global reputation in the automotive sector. The translation over time from the petrol or diesel engine to electric and from cars with drivers to autonomous vehicles is both a threat, if we lose out competitively, and an opportunity, if we work collaboratively to be the global centre of excellence in this field. As my noble friend Lord Borwick has said, we must grasp the latter.