The government is awarding £25 million this week to as many as six projects that will research and test autonomous vehicles on highways and on trials of remote-control parking.
It’s the second competition in a program that Richard Harrington, the UK’s automotive minister, predicts will lead to driverless cars in production within the next decade.
German media report transport minister Andreas Scheuer has threatened to fine Daimler 3.75 billion euros over a diesel-emissions scandal.
The report comes after Scheuer on Monday questioned Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche over how many Mercedes-Benz vans and cars need to be fixed after a regulator found illegal software in one of its models and the minister then expressed concerns that a total of 750,000 Mercedes vehicles could be affected and they could impose fines of up to 5,000 euros per car.
Europe’s plans to cut emissions look like unraveling.
The projections were based on a sizeable number of diesels being bought to reduce overall levels because they do more miles per gallon, but now some countries and cities have announced plans to penalise diesels due to their higher NOx emissions and this means more petrol engined models will be made and raise CO2 instead of decreasing it.