A new three-year autonomous mobility service research project has gone live on the streets of London, supported by a modified Nissan Leaf electric car.

The three-year project aims to deploy latest autonomous vehicle technology in complex urban environments

Dubbed ServCity, the project is jointly funded by government and industry and sees six partners – Nissan, the Connected Places Catapult, TRL, Hitachi Europe, the University of Nottingham and SBD Automotive – collaborate on a blueprint that directly tackles the barriers to deploying autonomous vehicles in the UK’s cities.

Following months of development, simulation and testing on private test tracks, the ServCity Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) is now being tested on the streets of London at TRL’s Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) based in Greenwich.

The test will draw on the full capabilities of the SMLL by using the roadside sensors and processing power to create a cooperative infrastructure environment, which will add to the CAV’s own situational awareness.

This will then provide a blueprint that directly tackles barriers to autonomous driving deployment in UK cities and focuses on the three key areas of technology, people and scalability.

The project is not only intended to help make autonomous vehicles more user-friendly, but also give users confidence that they can respond quickly and safely and to all types of challenges they face on the roads.

Andrew Hart, director at project partner SBD Automotive, explained: “Robotaxis have the potential to fundamentally transform mobility for both consumers and the cities they operate in. The user experience lies at the heart of that transformation, as operators will need to carefully balance customer expectations with real-world technological constraints. SBD is proud to be a part of the ServCity project, bringing our decades of hands-on experience from working with car makers to help define and test different approaches to delivering a seamless robotaxi experience.”

Bob Bateman, project manager at Nissan, added: “We are extremely proud to be a part of the ServCity project and are excited to trial our 100% electric Nissan Leaf as test vehicles. Our Nissan Intelligent Mobility strategy strives to achieve a mobility future that is more electric, more autonomous and more connected and we look forward to working in collaboration with ServCity’s other partners to achieve this.”