Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has allocated to the introduction of autonomous vehicles onto UK roads.

Since 2014, the Department for Transport has allocated £10.85m to research and development relating to automated vehicles. This includes £7.75m of funding towards the 4 Cities Driverless Cars project, and £3.1m towards the lorry platooning trials on the Strategic Road Network.

Overall, the Government is investing over £250m in connected and autonomous vehicle technologies, up to 2021, with the remainder coming through the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy. This is being match-funded by industry: its purpose is to create a world leading testing and development ecosystem in the UK. To date, this funding is supporting 73 collaborative R&D projects and 4 capital testing infrastructure investments.