SOL - Connected Autonomous Vehicle (CAV)

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council (SMBC) is delivering the Low Carbon Future Mobility (LCFM) project within the UK Central Infrastructure Programme. The project is assessing a breadth of new solutions to delivering low / zero carbon active and mass transport solutions.

Working closely with Borough and regional stakeholders there is an identified desire to learn how Connected Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technology may in the future be incorporated into both the Council's and private company's operations, as a way of providing an increased number of mass transport options to the public, addressing the over-reliance on privately-owned single-occupancy motor vehicles. Current trends indicate that if car sales continue along existing trajectories then moving in and around the Borough will become increasingly problematic at key pinch-points, so pathfinding interventions must be accelerated.

To support this ambition SMBC is seeking to procure one proven mass-people-moving connected autonomous vehicle (CAV), and associated supplier support, for use across the Borough and potentially wider West Midlands region over a period of a minimum of two years from April 2021. The vehicle will be loaned out to key regional stakeholders to deliver defined use case applications with the ambition of increasing regional understanding and awareness of the technology, helping the authority apply learning to future highways, residential, commercial and transport interchange infrastructure development. The project is not a technology development / feasibility study, rather a use case application demonstrator.