Axa claims that Great Britain may be lining up to miss out on driverless vehicle technology.
A lack of appropriate infrastructure and a shortage of self-driving car insurance is setting up the United Kingdom to face serious challenges if it doesn’t want to get left behind with driverless electric cars, says the Axa insurance company.
Autonomous vehicles are facing considerable barriers in the U.K. due to the lack of fast charging bays, among others.
Drivers of electric cars are already facing struggles with the fact that there aren’t enough rapid charging bays. Moreover, people are becoming concerned about the pressure electric vehicles are placing on the National Grid. This has become problematic to the point that it has overtaken a lack of self-driving car insurance covering liability.
At the moment, there are an estimated 125,000 electric cars in the United Kingdom that need to be plugged in to charge them. However, there are only around 14,000 chargers in the country and, among those, only around 2,620 of them are the rapid charging type that can provide up to a 80 percent fill up within a half hour. This is holding back the industry as a whole and is making it difficult for automated electric cars to find a start in the country.
Self-driving car insurance combined with a lack of charging stations could cause the country to fall behind.
Shell recently rolled out a number of different charging points for electric vehicles. These are the first from the brand to enter the U.K. and consist of 10 filling stations, primarily in London and the southeast.
The country is struggling to keep up with the rest of the developed world in reducing the number of vehicles running on gas (petrol) and diesel. Electric vehicles are the leading alternative choice, but drivers are already struggling to be able to charge them conveniently. When they need to drive a certain distance, recharging suddenly becomes very difficult due to charging station infrastructure, particularly when it comes to the rapid chargers.
As driverless vehicles are typically electric cars, it means that the lack of self-driving car insurance isn’t the only thing standing in the way of this new technology in the United Kingdom. Beyond coverage issues, the industry is also held back by the fact that drivers would not yet have adequate opportunity to recharge their vehicles in a convenient and practical way.