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| Taxi drivers need not fear Uber, this is the robot that will take driver's jobs. |
DRIVERS who love to blip the throttle to seamlessly hook a lower gear before diving into a corner and twitching the rear tyres out of the apex may want to stop reading right here.
For the grim news for all lovers of driving is that two world cities on both sides of the English channel are planning to do away with human drivers.
Agence France-Presse reports that British Finance Minister Philip Hammond announced £75 million (R1,3 billion) in funding for Artificial Intelligence and plans to put driverless cars on UK roads by 2021. Hammond announced regulation changes to allow Britain’s driverless car industry, which the government estimates will be worth £28 billion by 2035, to get cars on the road within as little as three years, according to extracts of the budget released by his office last Sunday.
“Some would say that is a bold move, but I believe we have to embrace these technologies if we want to see Britain leading the next industrial revolution,” he said in his budget speech on Wednesday.
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| The EZ10 operating in Paris. |
The minister also announced £400 million for companies hoping to roll out electric car charge points across the country.
With a focus on tech industries, the government is also planning to spend £75 million supporting companies developing AI and £160 million in developing 5G technology, which it believes will be necessary for the mass roll-out of driverless cars.
The news gets even worse for drivers across the channel. For while BMW and Mercedes-Benz already have concept cars with steering wheels that fold away to meet this demand for driverless cars while allowing some leeway for keen drivers to take control on rare occasions, the French just want you to take the bus.
These driverless buses are already proving popular in Helsinki, Finland, which aims to go car-free by 2025.
Paris officials have announced a test of a self-driving shuttle linking two train stations in the French capital. Two electric-power EZ10 minibuses, which can carry up to six seated passengers, were put into service on Monday and will be tested until early April between the Lyon and Austerlitz stations in Paris.
The GPS-guided vehicle is free and will be running seven days a week. “To respond to the pollution emergency in big urban zones it is urgent to innovate with new transportation systems that are more environmentally friendly,” said Catherine Baratti-Elbaz, head of the local district where the test is taking place.
Jean-Louis Missika, a Paris deputy mayor in charge of innovation, said self-driving vehicles “will change the urban landscape in a spectacular fashion” within the next 20 years.
Conceived by the French company Easymile, the EZ10 will also be tested between two main green spaces in southern Paris later this year.
The company said fleets of the small shuttles are already operating in several countries across the world, including the United States.
With a commercial speed of 15 km/h, the shuttle has been designed for public transportation to cover short distances.
Equipped with a system detecting objects, the EZ10 can adjust its trajectory to avoid obstacles and does not need heavy infrastructure to be operated.
