Readers familiar with the Coventry ring road will know how tricky it can be with a human driver at the wheel, so it’s a real test for an autonomous prototype.
RING ROAD RANGE ROVER
All the more credit then to Jaguar Land Rover engineers who have managed to complete an entire lap of the infamous road in a fully autonomous Range Rover at the 40mph limit. Although the car had a human driver on board, it handled junctions, slip roads and lane changes autonomously and suggests that JLR’s target to have self-driving cars on sale within 10 years may well be feasible.
The trials have been run as part of the £20 million government-funded UK Autodrive project. It ends this month, after three years, and has seen autonomous cars transfer from private test tracks onto public roads in Milton Keynes as well as Coventry. JLR bosses reckon the project has helped accelerate the development of its self-driving tech, which is why it’s confident it will be on sale within 10 years. Not only that, the Midlands region could emerge as “a hub of mobility innovation” and JLR claims its self-driving vehicles will be the best “in the widest range of terrain and weather conditions” – that’s off-road as well as on…
