By 2021, according to various Silicon Valley luminaries, bandwagoning politicians and leading cab firms in recent years, self-driving cars would have long been crossing the US, started filing along Britain's motorways and be all set to provide robotaxis in London. Indeed in the last weeks of 2020 Uber, one of the biggest players and supposed beneficiaries, decided to park its plans for self-driving taxis, selling off its autonomous division to Aurora in a deal worth about $4bn (£3bn) – roughly half what it was valued at in 2019. The decision did not, Uber's chief executive protested, mean the company no longer believed in self-driving vehicles. "Few technologies hold as much promise to improve people's lives with safe, accessible, and environmentally friendly transportation," Dara Khosrowshahi said. But more people might now take that promise with a pinch of salt.

Self-driving electric cars could make car parks obsolete within the next 10 years and reduce air pollution to almost zero in Scotland's cities, an expert has predicted. The vehicles are likely to be commonplace by 2030, said Simon Tricker, of "smart cities" specialist UrbanTide, which uses technology and data to improve city planning. "Scottish local authorities are already thinking about what city streets will look like in a decade's time - and the answers are pretty astounding," he said. Private companies can't be trusted on driverless cars, minister warns Ford to offer driverless commercial vehicles by 2021 Driverless car safety revolution could stall over moral dilemma Ministers pledge to put UK at heart of driverless car revolution Private companies can't be trusted on driverless cars, minister warns "Self-driving cars won't need parking spaces in cities - they're likely to be rented rather than owned and will just head off and carry out their next journey after dropping passengers off. Many car parking spaces which we now take for granted will simply become obsolete. "The pace at which electric vehicle technology is developing means they're also likely to be electric, so will produce zero emissions as they're driven.