Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (Second sitting)

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Hayes]

Q So Mr Wong thinks we should have a co-ordinated national strategy, whereas you think that the market should prevail. Is that the difference between you?

Brian Madderson: Yes, I think it is good to have a market strategy, but you would certainly need to have proper funding available to not only small retailers but large retailers as well. By this, I mean the independents, certainly. The big oil companies today count for relatively few of the total number of filling stations—less than 15%—across the UK.

[Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Q Obviously, you represent the motor manufacturers, and I am concerned about the shape and size of vehicles going forward and the adequacy of the legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull here has, I think, a Twingo—do you have a Twingo?

[Karl Turner]

A Twizy.

[Graham P. Jones]

Twizy—that is it. I notice even on the continent, particularly in urban areas, we are getting smaller and smaller electric vehicles and cars driving around. Is the legislation adequate for the type and size of electric vehicle that might come on to the market? What changes do you see, for example? How will an automated vehicle work when you add a trailer to it or make some other changes to it? The shape, size and form of vehicles is probably going to change, as you are well aware, so will the legislation be adequate for those vehicles to be on the road when they are automated—of course, when they are operated by an individual manually, there is a human choice—and the automation is making choices?

Steve Gooding: I will start with a very short answer, as the Chairman seeks, which is no. But that is because this is a very immature market. We do not even have the vehicles in the marketplace yet. Having also driven a Twizy, which is great fun, I think the construction and use standards, based on a mechanical testing of roadworthiness, should be sufficient for most of the concerns you are voicing, but they are certainly not sufficient for guaranteeing the roadworthiness of the autonomous software systems; you are going to need something new for that.

When it comes to the size of the vehicle, again, their crash-worthiness, for example, needs to be tested in the circumstances in which the vehicle will be used. Maybe then there will need to be something in addition either to prevent or constrain what other purposes—whether it be towing a trailer, a caravan or whatever—are appropriate for that vehicle.

[Graham P. Jones]

Q It is not just that. What if I set off with a trailer in manual mode but I suddenly decide to be sneaky and switch it over to automated and go to sleep? There are a whole bunch of issues around the change in form, shape and size of vehicle and going between manual and automated.

Steve Gooding: I would say a similar thing as to Mr Efford: as a consumer, if I am being invited either to travel in one of these vehicles because it is the equivalent of private hire, or to buy one, I expect to buy something that has been certified as safe for the use to which it is going to be put. If it is inappropriate for me to hitch a trailer to it and use it in autonomous mode, that had better be made clear to me at the point when I buy it.

[Mr Hayes]

Q I have one further question, on a slightly different subject. This morning, we talked about how these developments will change the nature of the skills required. Steve 1, if I may call you that, mentioned that earlier. Presumably you will also acknowledge that it will give rise to new skills. There will be a shift in skills and new kinds of jobs and skills will develop. Is there not an exciting prospect of a whole range of new competences coming as a direct result of this technology? Is that fair?

Steve Nash: Absolutely, yes. There is probably more opportunity than threat from the new technologies. We are interested in ensuring that those skills develop in the right way. If you look at autonomous vehicles—I mentioned electric vehicles earlier—we only know as yet what manufacturers have said about their plans in the future. It may well be, for example, that when we get to level 5, or even level 4, a lot of those vehicles are not sold in the way that they are sold today. A new electric vehicle was launched a couple of weeks ago by a new brand called Polestar, which is owned by the same people who own Volvo. They say that the car will be sold on a subscription model, so it would remain within the possession of the manufacturer.

There is a lot of road to cover between now and then. Whoever is looking after those cars—I have already talked about electric cars, but when we get to autonomous cars as well—they will still have accidents. Things will drop on them and things will happen to them that are not caused by the car. When they are repaired, we have to be assured that they are repaired to a standard that returns them to exactly the same capability they had before the accident, which means we need people who are certifiably competent to do that. That is where we are interested in seeing some clarity.

We have cars with quite substantial autonomous capabilities already—Tesla is a good example—and I have seen second-hand examples of them that have gone beyond the dealer network. You have to wonder about the competence of the people who will work on that car—I am not saying that they are incompetent, but I do not know that they are competent. When someone next engages the autonomous capabilities of that car, will they do the things they are supposed to do? We cannot just leave that to chance. We have to be sure that there is some way of assuring ourselves about the people who work on them. This is not like the days when there was somebody who was “a bit handy”, as I think the phrase used to be, and you could give your car to them and they could look after it. This is a paradigm shift. We need to move with that and recognise that these cars, even though they have four wheels and look a bit like the cars that we have today, are entirely different. The skills base needs to be elevated to deal with them because they are an entirely different prospect.