UK government to invest a further £38m in driverless cars

The UK government has revealed that it will invest a further £38m in driverless cars, as part of a £1bn investment in'cutting-edge' technologies - all announced in the same week that the government declared a general election for June. Business secretary Greg Clark announced that the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) would commit more than £1bn in taxpayers' money over the next four years to six key areas: Three of the areas - healthcare, energy, and robotics and AI, were announced in the 2017 Spring Budget - but Clark has now confirmed the total investment in each field, subject to business case approval. Robotics and AI will receive an investment of £93m. The government claimed that this would help "make industry and public services more productive by developing AI and robotics systems that can be deployed in extreme environments which occur in off-shore energy, nuclear energy, space and deep mining". Healthcare will get £197m to develop what the government called "first of a kind technologies for the manufacture of medicines that will speed up patient access to new drugs and treatments", while £246m will be spent on developing clean and flexible energy.