The UK government is to invest more than €4.52m in a Bosch-led consortium to accelerate the development of connected and automated vehicles in the UK.

The investment will help advance the use of connected and automated vehicles in the UK

The project will see a total of €9.04m invested in the exchange and interpretation of data to improve the transport network. The investment will help advance the use of connected and automated vehicles in the UK, including providing data to help city authorities to improve their transport networks and developing sensor data that allows automated vehicles to determine their location.

The government funds have been awarded following a competition run through its dedicated Meridian Mobility organisation.

The winning proposal, entitled ConVEx (Connected Vehicle data Exchange) is led by Bosch. The consortium includes Jaguar Land Rover, Transport for West Midlands, WMG, and three SMEs: Valerann, Synaptiv and Immense Solutions. Interdigital and Transport Systems Catapult will both support the consortium in their role as subcontractors.

The facility is to be headquartered on the WMG campus with a partner office at Bosch’s recently announced ‘Connectory’ facility in London, and will be developed over the course of 2019 with commercial data sharing operations commencing in 2020.

Prof Nick Reed, head of mobility R&D, Bosch UK and project lead for the company, said: “By developing safe and secure protocols for the commercial sharing of data for CAVs, we expect to accelerate technology research and development, support start-up organisations in developing new businesses based on this data, and deliver insights for the public sector in how to optimise current and future transportation systems.”