Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (First sitting)

Rob Marris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Kit Malthouse]

Q So you think the Government should predict and provide, rather than be agnostic about technology.

Denis Naberezhnykh: Yes. I do not think being agnostic, in the sense of saying, “We don’t care which technology it is. We just need to invest in putting all of it up” is particularly helpful to the industry and the users. We need to recognise that some technology can achieve things that other bits of technology cannot. Some have strengths and weaknesses, and we need to pick out those strengths and weaknesses and emphasise them for implementation in infrastructure appropriately.

[Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Q I cannot see anything in the Bill that would change who is licenced to drive a vehicle. In terms of future-proofing, one can envisage that people under the age of 17 or people with significant visual impairment could be, to use the current verb, “driving” automated vehicles. Should that future-proofing be provided for in the Bill, Mr Williams, and if so, what insurance issues would there be, say, for a seven-year-old alone in an automated vehicle?

David Williams: A major benefit of autonomous vehicles will be bringing mobility to people who currently do not have that benefit. We are very much looking forward to that. In Flourish—one of the Government-backed consortiums—we have Age UK as one of the critical partners to make sure that we understand the implications. I am not sure whether it needs to be in the Bill, because that establishes the insurance regime among other things. It will be complex for some vehicles. With the pods that UK Autodrive is going to put in Milton Keynes, there will be no way that you can intervene, so I see no reason why somebody in one of those vehicles would need to comply with any test or have any form of licence.

The majority of vehicles in the early stages of market development will probably be ones—for example, a level 4 vehicle—that you can switch from manual to automatic. You then get to the situation where people think, “An autonomous vehicle can bring me home when I’m drunk from a party, so I won’t need a taxi.” My thought is that you will not be able to do that if you have a vehicle that you can switch between the two modes, because you would still be in charge of a vehicle that could be driven manually.

At some point work needs to be done on licensing and testing, but for fully autonomous level 5 vehicles, the insurance aspects are covered in the Bill and we have no concerns there. We want to see the adoption of these vehicles because we think that they will make the roads generally safer and we therefore want them to be available appropriately, as widely as possible.

[Rob Marris]

Q The insurance provisions in the Bill would be sufficient to cover what I think you call a level 5 vehicle, which could be carrying a seven-year-old on their own.

David Williams: Absolutely.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Q I want to explore some issues of public confidence in the potential uptake of autonomous vehicles and get your views on whether the Bill goes far enough to set the scene. Given that the technology is available, what measures are required to make the public accept it and want to take it up? We have heard about the confusion and resistance, perhaps, because of the different approach to electric vehicles, but what do you think is required for the future in the Bill?

Steve Gooding: First, the Government are right to focus on the insurance angle, because that strikes me and the foundation as the first thing that needs sorting for all the reasons that the Committee is thinking about. Following that, what will affect the public’s willingness to accept the technology is their sense that it is genuinely safe. It is understandable that the Bill is silent on such things as construction and use standards, because they will need to be negotiated in an international forum. That is definitely something—the Minister knows we have flagged this up—to get on with thinking about. How you move away from a construction and use safety regulation system that is very much based on traditional mechanical engineering to one that is based far more closely on one that we apply to human drivers, because we are dealing with artificial intelligence, needs a bit of a boost.

David Williams: I think that we need to be vocal about the capability of the technology. We often quote statistics: for instance, automated emergency braking systems reduce accidents by 15% and injuries by 18%, so even if they do not avoid the accident completely, they slow the vehicle faster than a human would and reduce injuries. That is one small component of what will be the driverless cars of the future.

We need to show people the testing regime that these vehicles will undergo before they are let loose on the road, but it is natural to expect some nervousness and resistance. I do not know if any of you have seen the trailer for the new “Fast and Furious” movie, “The Fate of the Furious”, where robot cars get taken over. That will not help and, therefore, we need to be particularly vocal about the positive benefits. I fundamentally believe that we will see fewer deaths on the roads and much safer roads and, therefore, we need to do whatever we can to encourage adoption.

There is also a massively positive business case in the haulage industry for the adoption of connected and autonomous vehicles. I think we may see more rapid adoption in the commercial vehicle space. People will then get used to being around autonomous vehicles, even if they are commercial vehicles and that will make the adoption at a personal level easier.

Denis Naberezhnykh: I would add that some excellent work is happening in the UK now. A project called MOVE-UK compares and contrasts the different styles of vehicle automation and how an autonomous vehicle would perform in the same situation that a human driver performs in. That kind of comparison and learning will enable those automated vehicles and semi-autonomous functionalities to be as palatable to users as possible, so that there is the least amount of discomfort or worrying about the functionality when they try those vehicles out for the first time. It will be the first early adopters—early users—who will form an opinion and then spread the word about whether it works or whether they feel comfortable or not. Getting that right is important and some great work is already happening in the UK to try to do that.

David Wong: I have four brief points on increasing acceptance. One is on messaging. In addition to what Steve has just mentioned about showing the public that the technology is genuinely safe, we have to be very careful, particularly with regard to the Bill, with public messaging in relation to insurance, to assure the public that this will not result in a hike in insurance. The public will rightly expect that the lowering of risks and fewer accidents will mean that insurance premiums should come down.

The second point is about convincing the public through public demonstration projects. We are pleased that the Government are backing a number of these collaborative R and D and demonstration in live trial projects. We would like to see some of the learning coming out of these projects on how the public might interact with autonomous vehicles.

Thirdly, on public demonstration projects, going forward, perhaps the consumer can pay, not unlike the very successful Go Ultra Low campaign for ultra low emission vehicles. It may be useful for connected autonomous vehicles at the right point in time, and particularly at the point when vehicle manufacturers are ready to deploy these vehicles on UK roads.

Lastly, we think as an industry that the gradual escalation of the levels of automation can perhaps help Joe Public to be more comfortable with the technology, as opposed to asking Joe Public to jump straight into a vehicle with no steering wheel from day one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

Q The essence of your point is that the Bill and the debate that it stimulates will encourage innovation and catalyse the demand management tools that you describe.

Robert Evans: The Bill gives the Office for Low Emission Vehicles and other parts of the Government the ability to keep pushing forward discussion and dialogue between the motor industry and the energy sector to ensure that smart charging is part of our future, because it explicitly expresses a desire to regulate should smart charging not proceed. There is a desire to explore this, but the Bill gives the Government powers to help set an agenda that brings the groups together and moves forward the smart charging agenda.

Quentin Willson: Work is being done in America, notably by Tesla, where consumers charge their cars at smart times and then, when the grid is out of balance, that electricity is sold back to the power companies. These millions of electric cars become energy storage devices. This is another very important cycle of change that we need to look at. Any imbalance would be negated. Also, a lot of electricity is produced by renewables—wind and solar. In the UK, 41% of the electricity dragged from the grid on Christmas day was from renewables.

[Rob Marris]

Q If, over the next five years, 10% of new vehicles were electric and each of them, on average, did 10,000 km a year, 10,000,000 km per year would be driven in electric vehicles. This is a question for Mr Stewart. What is that as a percentage of UK electricity generation at the moment? You may not be able to reply today, but perhaps you will tell us. I am a bit worried that you will encourage all these electric vehicles and then the grid falls over, so I need to get some idea of proportionality.

Marcus Stewart: I will give you an example. If you have 1 million electric vehicles—you don’t need to worry too much about how many miles they are doing; when they are charging is what is really important, because that is what impacts on the supply and demand balance—and you charge them on a 7 kW charger, in theory that could give you 7 GW of demand, and 7 GW is two and a bit very large nuclear power stations.

[Rob Marris]

Q What percentage is that of total UK demand?

Marcus Stewart: Total UK demand today is about 50 or 55 GW.

[Rob Marris]

Q That is 12% or 13% of total electricity generation.

Marcus Stewart: If everyone charged at exactly the same time. Studies have shown that behaviours are such that around about 20% charge at the same time. You immediately, without incentivising people, just with normal behaviour, reduce that down to 1.5 GW. If you then apply smart charging incentives, you can reduce that by a further 84%, and that—

[Rob Marris]

Q Hang on—but we still have to generate the electricity. For shorthand, this is just a kind of Economy 7 approach to the issue.

Marcus Stewart: Let’s just look at peak for the moment, and then I will talk about annuals. So you move from 7 GW down to 1.5 GW and to around 400. You can see that, very rapidly, the total system has to deliver a lot less when it is under stress, if you move to a smart world. The system is designed to meet those peaks, so you end up with generation outside those peaks being available. That generation is there to meet the demand you have moved from 6 o’clock in the evening to 8 o’clock in the evening, 10 o’clock or whenever. The electricity system from a pipes point of view and a capacity point of view is designed to meet those very high peaks.

By applying smart charging, you can accommodate a lot of electrical vehicles without necessarily having to increase that overall total capacity at a total system level. If you have clusters of demand at a local level, you would expect there to be local reinforcement to accommodate that—fast charging, for example, can provide heavy loads at certain points on a system, but you would connect that to a slightly higher voltage tier to ensure sufficient capacity. The system has the capability to deal with it if the type of charging is smart. The provisions put forward in the Bill make total sense to us.

[Rob Marris]

Q Do you think that the market will handle it, in terms of a tariff regime that incentivises midnight charging, or do you think that there needs to be regulatory intervention by the legislator—to spread that load, literally?

Marcus Stewart: We have seen in the past that people respond to the incentives of charging tariffs—these natural behaviours where people would plug in—but in the first instance the capability needs to be there. The market then has the opportunity to provide the incentives to do that. I do not think it needs to be fully legislated that you must plug in—

[Rob Marris]

Q No, it is not that. I am saying that one way of doing it is regulation over the power supply and to say that you have got to make these incentives available for midnight charging. Should that be regulatory, to bring it about, or do you think the market will do that?

Marcus Stewart: I think the market will do that. Suppliers would look at the cost to them of securing more energy and they would look at the opportunities to trade that off against their portfolios. The market should provide that.

[Richard Burden]

Q Mr Evans in an earlier answer described the purpose of the Bill being to take reserve powers to allow stepping in to stimulate the right kind of infrastructure where the market does not provide it already. May I press you a little more on what that is, and on whether the Bill is hitting the right target? The stress within the Bill is on the provision of charging infrastructure by what it describes as “large fuel retailers.”

A lot of the discussion we have had so far has been about the importance of having rapid availability of charging points, and sometimes smart charging points, in a much more dispersed area than what might be described as large fuel retailers—typically, the motorway service areas. Is the emphasis on that right? If it is not the right emphasis, do those powers need to be applied more broadly? If those reserved powers are applied more broadly, what safeguards need to be in the Bill to ensure that unreasonable regulatory requirements are not put on a whole dispersed range of potential electricity suppliers?

Robert Evans: That is a good point. The powers that we are looking at are primarily around the provision of information to the user, the ability to have smart charging should you need it, and the interoperability. Those sorts of questions are dealt with in the Bill and are key topic areas for the industry. On the question of where infrastructure is located, supermarkets are an interesting one. We have a situation in which not everybody has off-street parking. When one comes to a place such as London, it is not practical to put charging all down London streets. Supermarkets become an extremely practical, pragmatic place for charging to be accessible, along with retail shopping centres, in a crowded city such as London. The consideration of that, along with motorway service areas, which is about allowing people to travel distances across the UK, are two strategic priorities. That is not to say that there are not other areas. The Government have provided incentives for the deployment of infrastructure in other locations and have obviously taken a view that maybe the market can deliver in those locations.

Quentin Willson: However, technology does exist that would allow you to charge at a street lamp post, although admittedly that could be for slow charging at night. For people who do not have parking within their house and have to rely on the street, this facility could be available on every single lamp post in the UK.