Self-driving and electric cars to be key focus of upcoming UK budget

The UK's move towards the next generation of vehicles is set to receive a big boost thanks to the upcoming budget, which is due on November 22nd.

The headline focus is a £400 million fund which has been earmarked for building out the country's electric car charging infrastructure, which should ensure a large increase in the amount of places where you can charge your vehicle mid-journey.

Consumers will also be incentivised to buy more electric cars with £100 million worth of grants, with the aim of making them more financially appealing than their combustion engine counterparts.

Getting autonomous vehicles on the road

Although self-driving cars are a little further away in the future, the budget also includes measures to ease their development such as allowing manufacturers to test the vehicles on public roads without the need for an operator.

It's hoped that these measures will allow the UK to have driverless cars on its roads in the next three years.

It's early days when it comes to both these technologies, but focussing this amount of money on them is sure to benefit adoption.

After all, the majority of car journeys in the UK are within range of current electric vehicles, and as adoption improves these ranges are only going to increase.

If the UK is to achieve its ambitious target of going all-electric by 2040, then it will need to start spending now to achieve this transition.