About us

CCAV is a joint unit made up of the Department for Transport and Department for Business and Trade.

The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) was founded in 2015 and is the hub for all things automated driving in the UK government. CCAV is a joint Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and Department for Transport (DfT) unit.

Our mission is to promote the safe development, production and use of connected and automated mobility technologies in the UK to deliver societal and economic benefits. Since 2015, we have jointly funded over £600 million in over 100 research and development projects with industry, involving over 200 universities and companies.

We published a Code of Practice for Trialling Automated Vehicles and introduced a programme to develop and implement standards, testing and monitoring processes to ensure that self-driving vehicles are safe and resilient to cyber-attacks.

And we have delivered a landmark piece of legislation to enable the commercial deployment of AVs on public roads.

CCAV’s objectives are to:

  • make the movement of people and goods in the UK safer, fairer, greener, and more efficient 
  • set strategic direction and provide investment certainty through policy and other commercial interventions   
  • develop and implement the legislative and safety frameworks necessary to enable the safe commercial deployment of self-driving vehicles, as part of the Automated Vehicles Act programme  
  • provide joint investment with industry through 2026 to overcome the barriers to commercial deployment thereby attracting, de-risking, and anchoring global investment, creating jobs, and strengthening our supply chain so that the UK is a maker of these technologies and services, not just a taker 
  • engage with the public to gain an insight into public opinion and to increase the public’s understanding of emerging technologies 

CCAV uses its unique position to bring together world-class expertise from across the public, private and academic sectors to create a strong, collaborative UK ecosystem delivering safe, innovative and appropriately regulated technologies and services.

The benefits of this work could include: 

  • growing the UK economy and unlocking investment in UK companies 
  • strengthening the UK’s position as a science and artificial intelligence (AI) superpower  
  • improving connectivity across the country and accessibility for people with restricted or limited mobility 
  • improving road safety and efficiency 

The work undertaken by CCAV and its partners providing grant funding to support collaborative research has helped develop a nascent connected and automated mobility (CAM) supply chain in the UK, supporting more than 100 projects and 200 organisations to develop cutting edge technologies, products and services.   

CCAV continues to work across the UK CAM sector to help unlock the future UK market, delivering annual economic benefits as high as £66 billion per year by 2040 and securing an estimated additional 342,000 jobs.

Email: enquiries@ccav.gov.uk