Budget day 2024 great self-driving events: Ohmio shuttle at the NEC
Budget day 2024 was another momentous day in the history of Cars of the Future and our mission to chart the development of self-driving in the UK.
We won’t dwell on the £40bn in tax rises here, but, while Chancellor Rachel Reeves was busy announcing the very welcome extension of the Plug-in Van Grant (PiVG), the reinstatement of the 2030 new petrol and diesel car sales ban, and £200m in funding to accelerate local EV charge point rollout, major self-driving developments were taking place.
Self-driving events
First, a stone’s throw from Parliament, at One Great George Street, WMG hosted a high-profile industry conference on Professor Siddartha Khastgir’s Cross-Domain Safety Assurance for Automated Transport Systems – more to follow on that.
We must, however, skip straight to the afternoon, and a trip to the Advanced Engineering Show at the NEC in Birmingham. We covered last month how visitors will soon be able to enjoy electric self-driving shuttle rides from the station to the halls, courtesy of New Zealand-based autonomous vehicle manufacturer, Ohmio.
This was a pre-trial trial – a chance for members of the public to get a brief taste of the coming self-driving service in the safety of the NEC car park. Thank goodness for the press pass, because the queue to try it was long!
Following our on-road trial in an Oxa-modified Mondeo in August, this was another unmissable chance to have a go in a real live self-driving vehicle in the UK – and not a modified car, a built from the ground up self-driving shuttle – The Ohmio Lift…
Brian Matthews, Ian Pulford and members of the Solihull & Coventry Automated Links Evolution (SCALE) team were on-hand to answer questions, with the former then hot-footing it to Milton Keynes to display the shuttle at the new MK Smart City Experience Centre, ahead of another eagerly-awaited on-road trial starting next month.
Here, the shuttle might only have been circling a largely obstacle-free car park, but it was nonetheless impressive that the software had only been trained on the route that morning.
The drive was decent, a little jerky maybe, but not on the scale of a London Tube train! The accessibility was amazing, with an automatic wheelchair ramp and a spacious dedicated bay inside.
Self-driving deployment
Pulford, CEO at project lead Smart City Consultancy, has high hopes for the vehicle, with the on-road StreetCAV project in Milton Keynes potentially a blueprint for nationwide deployment.
“StreetCAV has been going for some time now, so we are absolutely thrilled that it is finally at a stage where we can reveal it to the world,” he said. “We truly believe we have developed a solution which can change the future of urban mobility while making our towns and cities smarter, greener, and more inclusive.
“We have worked rigorously to ensure public safety. Working closely with Milton Keynes City Council, BT and ECS, we will establish a city centre control room, connected by a specifically designed communications network, provided by CableFree, which will allow the Ohmio vehicles to be supervised and managed remotely.
“It has been a fantastic project to work on and we can’t thank our partners and funders enough for their continued work and support.”
Mark Cracknell, program director at Zenzic, added: “We are proud to have supported the development of StreetCAV, and to have worked with all of the partners involved.
“Should the trial prove a success, it could lay the foundations for a more connected, inclusive, and resilient transportation network, not only for Milton Keynes, but for towns and cities across the globe.
“It is a perfect example of how, by working more collaboratively and bringing together industry, academia and the public sector, the UK can lead the way in accelerating the self-driving revolution.”
Finally, it is starting to feel like the revolution has begun.
