Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential for driverless cars to increase energy efficiency.

Andrew Jones

Connected and autonomous vehicles could potentially have significant impacts on factors that affect the overall energy consumption and energy efficiency of road transport. The Department for Transport is currently conducting research to explore the energy impacts of connected and autonomous vehicles. This work is ongoing, and forms part of a much wider programme of research and development that the Government is supporting to examine the issues associated with these technologies. The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles also plans to do further research in this area.