Cars of the Future - autonomous vehicle news and driving developments from around the world
Providing self-driving news since 2019, Cars Of The Future is a trusted source on autonomous vehicles and driving. Following passionate feedback to his 2018 article, Autonomous Now, for The Institute of the Motor Industry, motoring journalist Neil Kennett identified an urgent need for a new independent voice on driverless vehicles, as they were known at the time.
Independent news and views on self driving cars
Cars Of The Future’s continuing mission is: “To chart the development of, and encourage sensible debate about, all aspects of self-driving.” We promote informed opinion in a sector plagued by hyperbolic headlines.
Back in 2020, during lockdown, we were recognised as a Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) Creator by Zenzic, the organisation charged with “accelerating the self-driving revolution” in the UK.
We approached other CAM Creators for interview, leading to a new strand of industry expert long-reads. These proved popular and broadened our content from self driving cars to CAM.
We have since signed multiple prestigious media partnership agreements, notably with BSI (the UK national standards body), MOVE and Reuters Events.
These saw our editor moderating high profile panel discussions on everything from advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to electric vehicle (EV) models, as well as CAM.
Other important Cars Of The Future milestones include our first e-newsletter, published in 2022, the inaugural Self-Driving Industry Awards in 2023, and our first hard copy magazine in 2024.
We cover all kinds of on- and off-road autonomous vehicles – cars, robotaxis, buses, trucks, shuttles, and robots – and occasionally drones, autonomous eVTOLs (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft, boats and even spacecraft.
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Driverless cars
For crystal clarity, you won’t find any fully autonomous cars for sale at your local UK dealership, yet. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines six levels, ranging from Level 0 (fully manual) to Level 5 (fully autonomous). Even the handful of test autonomous cars on UK roads must still have an attentive on-board human in control, although this might soon change. As of 2026, no autonomous driving system has achieved Level 5. The UK legislative line is currently drawn between Level 2, partial driving automation, and Level 3, conditional driving automation. The most advanced system currently available to UK motorists is probably Ford’s BlueCruise. This Level 2 system enables some Mustang Mach-E drivers, on approved parts of the UK motorway network, to legally take their hands off the wheel… so long as they keep their eyes on the road, otherwise it will deactivate. This is driver assistance, not self-driving.Self-driving cars, buses and other vehicles
The great hope for many in public transport, several UK government-backed automated bus trials are already live. The Cambridge Connector project sees single-decker Alexander Dennis Enviro100AEV buses running with a safety driver between Babraham Road Park & Ride and the university medical campus. Operated by Whippet Coaches, they use the CAVStar autonomous driving system by Bristol-based company Fusion Processing.Self-driving shuttles
Elsewhere, bearing little resemblance to traditional buses, Ohmio LIFT shuttles are testing ferrying passengers at approx. 15mph between the shopping complex and train station in Milton Keynes. With a pack-away joystick instead of a steering wheel, it is optimised for disabled pedestrians, with an automatic ramp and dedicated wheelchair bay.Autonomous driving trucks
Remember when platooning heavy good vehicles were tipped as a great early use case? That hasn’t happened, not in the UK at least. Backed by the Department for Transport and National Highways, the HelmUK project ran for five years up to 2022. It concluded that, while platooning could deliver marginal fuel savings, merging with other vehicles at motorway junctions posed significant risks. Beyond platooning, on the long open roads of Texas, companies such as Aurora and Kodiak are responsible for pioneering hub-to-hub L4 trucking operations. Reported benefits include improved safety and reduced labour costs, in a sector which struggles with driver shortages. Here, electric HGV charging company Voltempo has predicted billion £ savings from moving to No User in Charge (NUiC) models, supported by remote drivers in control rooms.Autonomous vehicle companies – robotaxi service operators
Could 2026 be the year when robo-taxis finally hit UK streets? Already completing over 400,000 paid rides a week in the US, the industry leader is Waymo, the company formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project. Now shifting “from experimentation to scale”, it recently announced plans to launch a “premium” app-based ride-hailing service in London “by September”. Waymo was the first to offer autonomous driving taxi rides, albeit in small strictly controlled geographic areas, back in 2020 – as documented by Youtuber JJ Ricks. To run fully autonomous cars in the UK with no on-board driver will require a rules change. Intriguingly, in January 2026, Local Transport Minister, Lilian Greenwood, announced: “We’re supporting Waymo and other operators through our passenger pilots, and pro-innovation regulations to make self-driving cars a reality on British roads.” In the US, robotaxi models from companies like Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox are competing directly, notably in San Francisco. Part of Waymo’s recent service expansion sees its robotaxis driving on freeways for the first time. Others with an interest include ride-hailing companies Lyft and Uber, who both partner with Baidu, often described as China’s Google. Watch this space!Autonomous car costs
Operational costs remain a contentious issue. According to research by McKinsey, robotaxi rides currently cost around US$8 per mile. This is predicted to drop to US$1.32 per mile by 2035, provided sensor and maintenance costs come down. By comparison, according to Forbes, the cost of operating a new private car in the US currently stands at approximately US$0.60-US$0.80 per mile, cheaper than the robotaxis of 2035, prompting talk of an AV affordability emergency.Not just autonomous cars – tractors
Away from public roads, automated vehicles of all shapes and sizes are quietly being adopted in agriculture and port logistics. In 2025, John Deere announced that “autonomous farming is here”. Jeremy Clarkson – who once suggested that “driverless cars are pointless” – has introduced an AgBot T2 model at his Diddly Squat Farm. The Port of Felixstowe now has around 50 Shanghai Westwell automated tractors, predominantly used for moving shipping containers on flatbed trailers. AV software specialist Oxa is also targeting “commercial rollout in the US$2 trillion Industrial Mobility Automation (IMA) market”.Autonomous robots
Autonomous delivery robots are increasingly common in the UK, USA and elsewhere, with market leaders including Starship Technologies and Serve Robotics. In 2025, we presented our inaugural Fleet Operator Self-Driving Industry Award to Starship for running the largest autonomous delivery fleet in the world. With 2,000 robots globally, this last mile specialist has made over a million deliveries in the UK alone. More than half of these customers say that without them, they would have driven to a store. So, based on average emissions, they’ve already cut carbon emissions by 360,000kg.Physical AI
There’s one kind of physical AI that captures the imagination more than any other: Humanoid robots. In January 2026, Tesla announced plans to discontinue the Model S and Model X and move towards physical AI, with its California factory being repurposed for the third generation Optimus robot.Is that an autonomous car?
In America, Alex Roy has suggested an autonomous car litmus test called Roy’s Razor. “Can you get in, pick a destination and safely go to sleep?” he asks. “If yes, it’s self-driving. If no, it’s not.” Sadly, the internet is awash with less-than-sensible people climbing out of the driver’s seat in their Level 2 cars – that’s an advanced driver assistance system, not an autonomous car! To avoid such recklessness, how about this… the best way to tell if a vehicle is truly autonomous is to ask: Has it got a steering wheel? Audi has been down this road in the thinking behind its Grandsphere concept car. When in “hands-off” mode, the wheel folds neatly away. That certainly removes any doubt as to whether the driver is a User in Charge, to use The Law Commission of England and Wales’ language. “We will be ready for Level 4 driving in the second half of this decade,” said Josef Schloßmacher, Audi’s spokesperson for concept cars. “That’s an important timeframe for us and we will interact with authorities in the different continents and countries in all important markets on the homologation of this new technology.”SAE levels of autonomy
What are all these references to models with different levels of autonomy? Launched in 2014 by US-based SAE International, formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers, the document in question is SAE J3016 Recommended Practice: Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles. The most recent version, published in May 2021, uses a six-level scale. Level 0 is considered “fully manual”, meaning the human driver must perform all driving tasks. For levels 0-2, it says: “You are driving whenever these driver support features are engaged – even if your feet are off the pedals and you are not steering” and “You must constantly supervise these support features; you must steer, brake or accelerate as needed”. Basically, you’re much like any other driver. Expectations for levels 4-5 are straightforward enough too: “You are not driving when these automated driving features are engaged – even if you are seated in the driver’s seat” and “These automated driving features will not require you to take over driving”. Basically, you’re now a passenger in an autonomous car.Operational design domains
L4 automation enables a self-driving car to operate without human intervention in specific scenarios or environments, known as the operational design domain (ODD). L5 represents top of the shop autonomous driving, whereby the autonomous car can operate in all conditions without human input. It doesn’t yet exist. Which leaves L3 models, and the instruction: “When the feature requests, you must drive”, applicable to features such as “traffic jam chauffeur”. This is the most controversial part of the guidance, with some experts vehemently opposed to systems involving handing over and/or retaking control.Automated driving L3
In 2023, Bill Gates, noted: “The first L3 car was recently approved for use in the United States, although only in very specific conditions.” That was Mercedes’ Drive Pilot, initially available on 2024 S-Class and EQS Sedan models. “Certification in Nevada marks the start of its international rollout and, with it, the dawning of a new era,” said Mercedes-Benz CTO, Markus Schäfer. In the UK, in 2023, The Department for Transport approved the use of Ford’s L2 BlueCruise system on parts of our motorway network – the first time any UK driver could legally take their hands off the wheel. Ford, Government ministers, Thatcham, and others, emphasised it was driver assistance, but that didn’t stop the media from misleadingly describing it as self-driving. And here’s the crux. As Dr Nick Reed, of Reed Mobility, told parliament’s Transport Select Committee, the SAE levels “…work from an engineering perspective, but they don’t work very well from a communications perspective.” The ODD differentiates Level 4 from 5, with BSI’s CAM vocabulary telling us this can include environmental factors, time-of-day restrictions, and road characteristics – including the number of other nearby vehicles.On-road in the UK, US and China – San Francisco leads the way
In the UK, small numbers of trial L4 robotaxis, shuttles and buses already operate on public roads, with a trained human operator in the driver’s seat just in case. In America, Waymo is already running autonomous cars in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, using modified Jaguar I‑PACE, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Zeekr cars. In 2026, it launched its 6th-Generation Waymo Driver package, featuring lidar, cameras and radar. Zoox, part of Amazon, is offering autonomous test rides in Las Vegas, Austin and Miami using its autonomous bidirectional shuttle, the model known colloquially as “the toaster”. In China, Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi service is reportedly delivering over 250,000 autonomous car rides per week in Wuhan, Beijing and Chongqing.Self-driving cars – key themes
Self-driving related subjects we find ourselves returning to time and again include: Policy (legislation, standards and regulations); Technology – hardware and software, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity, cybersecurity, physical AI and testing (real world and simulation); Business services like insurance and legal; and hot topics like crashes.Artificial intelligence and machine learning in autonomous driving systems
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are central to many autonomous driving systems, powering the decision-making and perception capabilities. These advanced technologies enable intelligent vehicles to interpret vast amounts of data from an array of sensors – cameras, radar, lidar and ultrasonic – detecting nearby vehicles, other road users and obstacles, and responding appropriately, even covering rare scenarios (edge cases). While adaptive cruise control (ACC) monitors the position and speed of other vehicles, automatically maintaining a safe distance, AI and ML go far beyond this – delivering more advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and, increasingly, automated driving systems (ADS). Lucid Motors, for example, is aiming to deliver one of the world’s first consumer-owned L4 autonomous vehicles, to safely operate in complex scenarios using the power of NVIDIA’s DRIVE AGX Thor platform.AV sensor fusion
For such a brilliant technology, sensor fusion has faced more than its fair share of criticism. Back in 2021 (to the alarm of engineers, it was later revealed), Tesla started cutting back on radar in favour of CEO Elon Musk’s preferred “vision-only” approach. Basically, cameras backed by AI systems. He famously described lidar as a ‘crutch’. In response, manufacturers including Ford and GM were vocal in their support for sensor fusion, particularly in protecting pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. It requires an acceptance that each type of sensor has its shortcomings. Cameras aren’t great in fog, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) connections can be lost in tunnels, lidar and radar can both be susceptible to ‘phantom objects’, often the result of reflected signals. By efficiently processing data from multiple sensors, sensor fusion creates a more resilient system. According to a 2025 report by Future Market Insights, the global sensor fusion market will more than quadruple from US$8.1 billion today to US$34.9 billion by 2035. “By combining data from multiple sensors, sensor fusion enables improved perception, enhanced decision making, and greater system reliability compared to standalone sensor inputs,” the report stated, pretty unequivocally.AVs and road infrastructure
Detailing the importance of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications in road infrastructure, Robert Bateman, evolvAD Project Manager at Nissan Technical Centre Europe (NTCE), said: “Another aspect was having infrastructure communicating with the car. For example, getting an input regarding a bus at a standstill around the next corner – our car changed lanes in readiness before anybody else on the road even knew it was there. The car can work autonomously but Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) gives it a competitive edge.”International autonomous driving standards
An important development in terms of international autonomous driving standards came in early 2026, when the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) published its proposed world wide regulation. The result of two years of intensive consultations, key points in the Global Technical Regulation on autonomous driving systems include:· Safety Management System (SMS): lifecycle safety governance including the audit and certification of the SMS.
· Testing credibility: requirements to demonstrate the credibility of test environments and methods, including in simulation.
· Safety Case: Manufacturers must demonstrate that the ADS is free from unreasonable risk.
· In-service monitoring & reporting (ISMR): including reporting to the relevant authorities to enable learning and corrective action.
· Data Storage System for Automated Driving (DSSAD): the capability to record and store relevant ADS performance data.
“Harmonized vehicle rules developed at UNECE are essential to avoid fragmented national approaches and thus maximize economies of scale,” said UNECE Executive Secretary, Tatiana Molcean.
Not everyone is convinced though. Self-driving critic Michael DeKort said: “No one has seen ANY meaningful data by design from anyone. Data that ensures the engineering approach weaknesses of pattern recognition AI/ML and pixel level deep learning (DL) are mitigated.”
AV benefits
Improved safety is the main stated benefit of autonomous cars. In the excellent 2017 House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee report, “Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: The Future?”, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) asserted that human error is a causal factor in 90-95% of road traffic accidents.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1.2 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes, often pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users.
“Human drivers are distracted. They drink. They text. They take drugs. Autonomous vehicles do none of that,” said Bob Lutz, former vice chair of General Motors.
AVs could save many thousands of lives. Perfection is a lofty goal though, and highly automated systems may also introduce new risks, such as ‘phantom braking’.
In the US in 2016, Joshua Brown reportedly became the first person to die in a car driving itself. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigated and found that his Tesla Model S in Autopilot hit another vehicle with neither the assisted driving system nor the driver applying the brakes.
Ten years on, Waymo claims “92% fewer bodily injury claims and 88% fewer property damage claims over 25 million miles”.
AV benefit: Improved accessibility
Another major stated benefit of AVs is improved accessibility for people who can’t or shouldn’t drive. Gordon McCullough, CEO of the UK-based Research Institute for Disabled Consumers (RiDC), describes this as “a huge trust issue”.
“Self-driving can clearly be a transformative technology for a lot of disabled people, particularly those who find public transport inaccessible or cannot drive,” he said.
“An on-demand self-driving service, taking you from your door to wherever you need to go – a transport hub, hospital or shopping centre – could be a gamechanger, theoretically a wonderful step forward.
“The problem is nobody’s really talking about how to design these things to make them accessible, and nobody’s really talking to disabled people about their concerns. We’re actively working to address that now.
“The Motability Foundation found that disabled people are 38% less likely to use UK public transport than non-disabled people. That’s a damning statistic and it hasn’t changed in over a decade.
“As we’ve seen with charging points for electric vehicles, the anxieties are multiplied for disabled people. To try and understand the pain points, and then to use design to build trust and acceptance, that’s still a fanciful concept for a lot of people. It should be considered best practice.”
Will I ever own one?
It has been suggested that autonomous driving capabilities will finally break the link between private car ownership and access, simultaneously reducing congestion and increasing productivity.
Studies also indicate that the widespread adoption of self driving cars could free-up up to 90% of urban parking space, transforming city landscapes.
For many of us born last century, a car will be the second most expensive thing we ever buy, after a house. With our hearts ruling our heads, we dismiss the sage advice of oil baron Paul Getty – “If it appreciates, buy it. If it depreciates, lease it.” – for the love of a particular model.
However, within recent new car registration figures, there’s a notable trend: the growth is driven by fleets, with private buyer registrations well down.
A 2023 McKinsey Mobility survey of 4,000 French, German and UK respondents found that 60% owned a car, and 80% had regular access to one – an important distinction, and demographics come into play.
As Doug Jenkins of AXA Insurance pointed out: “In my day, passing your test and getting your first car was all about mobility. Young people still want to get from A to B, but they want choices – they’re not so worried about ownership.”
When it comes to money, temporary car insurance provider, Cuvva, provides some compelling statistics: the average car owner in Outer London will spend £3,502 a year on running costs alone (insurance, fuel, MOT, tax and maintenance), and 31% of London car owners use their vehicle less than 10 times a month.
AV environmental benefits
There’s growing evidence that AV technology can reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions through optimised driving patterns.
At the Zenzic Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) Innovators’ Day 2025 in London, Mike Looney, of Caterpillar, highlighted a study showing a 30% fuel saving for autonomous vehicles over human drivers.
Jim Hutchinson, of Self-Driving Industry Award-winner Fusion Processing, added: “The more you can make AV services commercially viable, the more you can get people out of their cars and into buses, which is great for net zero.”
Public perception
According to the 2024 paper, “Driving the Future: Addressing Generational Trust and Ownership Barriers in the Adoption of Connected and Automated Vehicles”, based on a survey of over 3,000 UK transport users, age is an important factor in autonomous driving trust and acceptance.
In response to the question “Would you find sitting in traffic more enjoyable if you were able to concentrate on other things (e.g. work/entertainment)?”, the report found that the ‘no’ percentage increased with age – from an encouraging 31% of Gen Z, born mid-1990s to early 2010s, up to 43% of Gen X, born mid-1960s to late 1970s, and rising sharply to a sizeable 65% of Boomers, born mid-1940s to 1960s, higher still for those born before WWII.
A subsequent question, however, revealed a more complicated picture. Asking “How comfortable are you with vehicles operating at L4 or L5?”, the researchers identified a range of views within each generation.
While trust in self-driving is highest among those aged 30-39, with 8% “very comfortable” with the idea, this halves to just 4% for those aged 18-29, less than the 5% recorded for those aged 50-59.
To address this, the researchers developed the SASS Model, which categorises individuals into four groups: Sceptics, Alarmists, Swing Voters, and Supporters.
“To bring about public acceptance of CAM, we need to target messaging appropriately,” explained report co-author Dr Clare Mutzenich. “The two middling groups, the sceptics and swing voters, are arguably most interesting. Together, they represent more than a third of the target population.”
More recently, 2024 Self-Driving Industry Award winner Dr Mutzenich has conducted interesting new research into emergency scenarios – passenger needs in case of fire, flood or sickness.
Concerning self driving cars
Some concerns about driverless cars are not without foundation. In a series of experiments from 2013 onwards, Miller and Valasek showed that a hacker with wired or over-the-internet access to certain vehicles could disable or apply the brakes, turn the steering wheel and cause acceleration.
While a malicious attack could have horrific crash consequences, Craig Smith, a security researcher who runs Car Hacking Village at Defcon, the world’s largest hacking convention, has asserted AV technology is generally secure.
“The interesting thing is that each sensor doesn’t trust the other,” he said. “It’s closer to the way humans figure out whether something is an illusion or not. And that’s harder for a hacker to deal with.”
Celebrating the best AV people and products
Every year at the Self-Driving Industry Awards, we at Cars Of The Future celebrate excellence in automated mobility, in the UK and internationally.
Our 2025 Vehicle of the Year award winner was the all-new Enviro100AEV by bus company Alexander Dennis and Fusion Processing.
Professor Missy Cummings was crowned Person of the Year 2025 for highlighting the dangers of over-reliance on camera-based vision.
What Cars Of The Future is all about
Also in 2025, our editor Neil Kennett was highly commended by The Guild of Motoring Writers for “Features that are valued by specialists, yet also interesting and easily accessible to non-specialists”. That’s what Cars Of The Future is all about.