Sunderland cashes in on autonomous project funding

Project V-CAL, being led by the North East Automotive Alliance (NEAA), will run up to four zero-emission autonomous HGVs around Nissan’s Sunderland site, on private roads where the vehicles will navigate traffic lights, roundabouts, and other road users. The work, in partnership with Vantec, Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK (NMUK), StreetDrone, Nokia, Newcastle University, ANGOKA, and Womble Bond Dickinson (UK) LLP, has been awarded £4 million by government, matched by industry to a total £8 million. The HGVs will operate without any personnel on board but will be monitored by a remote safety driver as backup.

“The North East region is uniquely placed to develop, test and commercialise Connected and Autonomous Logistics (CAL) projects,” said Paul Butler, CEO at the North East Automotive Alliance. “It is home to a critical mass of local manufacturing industry, with ambitious growth plans. We are delighted to be awarded V-CAL project funding to be able to scale and expand the initial 5G CAL proof of concept, which ended in 2022, and provide two real industrial use cases for the scale and deployment of connected and autonomous logistics.