Building public trust in autonomous vehicles is key, but commercialising at pace will be essential to cement UK leadership, according to the business minister.
Speaking to UKTN, Nusrat Ghani, the minister of state at the Department for Business and Trade, said building public trust is “absolutely key” in the autonomous vehicle rollout and it must happen at a “pace that the public are comfortable with”.
However, the minister said she feels “anxious” over whether the UK is “treading too slowly”.
“We need to move at a pace that’s fast enough to commercialise the products,” Ghani said.
“We want to be able to work at a pace where it’s still credible to invest in these technologies here in the UK.”
Ghani compared the adoption of autonomous driving technology to battery technology, saying the UK was not an “early adopter” and is therefore now “relying on China to produce 80% of our batteries”.
British autonomous vehicle startups include Oxa, Wayve and FiveAI.
Recent incidents involving driverless technology in the US have highlighted safety concerns. Late last year, Cruise – the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of General Motors – recalled 950 of its driverless cars in the US following a crash in San Francisco.
Ghani said the implementation of self-driving vehicles is “going to be iterative” and will likely come with challenges.
The Wealden MP said there are “incidences that take place in lots of mainstream events in society” and “no doubt as it rolls out over a period of time, if there are incidents, they’ll be reflected on throughout that whole process”.
The Automated Vehicles Bill from the Department for Transport is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons, having passed the third reading in the House of Lords – where the bill originated – in February.
The House of Commons is set to conduct the committee stage reading later this month.
