A driverless car in the US. Image via Flickr/Melody Kramer

While the jury’s still out on whether people will actually buy self-driving cars, the race is hotting up for countries looking to take the lead when it comes to developing and testing autonomous vehicles.

Yesterday, the UK government laid down their claim with plans to work on legislation in the area, and the announcement of a £10 million ($16 million) prize for a British town or city to make itself a testing ground for the technology. Chancellor George Osborne unveiled the proposals in the Autumn Statement, which laid out the country’s latest economic plans. Along with quantum technology and a collaborative space programme, driverless cars were a major point of interest when it came to investing in science and technology. According to the statement:

The government will support the development of driverless cars through reviewing the regulation and legislation that applies to the testing of driverless cars, and creating a prize fund of £10 million awarded to a town or city to develop as a testing ground. 

It’s clear that the UK is trying to make itself something of a centre for autonomous vehicles. Earlier this year, the government granted researchers at the University of Oxford permission to test their modified Nissan cars on British roads (before that, they were restricted to private property). 

The “pods” planned for Milton Keynes. Via Youtube/bisgovuk

And last month, plans were announced for a driverless car scheme in Milton Keynes, a city not far from London. That scheme won’t use autonomous cars like the Google model we’ve come to automatically associate with the term, but rather a set of specially designed “pods” that run on designated pathways at around 12 miles per hour. They’re scheduled to be up and running by 2015, but won’t be fully autonomous until 2017. 

“The number of cars in the world is expected to reach four billion by 2050, four times today’s number, so it is important that the UK is at the cutting edge of new technologies,” said UK business secretary Vince Cable at the time. “Driverless cars have the potential to generate the kind of high-skilled jobs we want Britain to be famous for as well as cutting congestion and pollution and improving road safety.”

The UK’s latest announcement throws down the gauntlet to other countries hoping to get the scoop on this technology. The US is of course a frontrunner, largely thanks to Google’s efforts, and Florida, Nevada and California have taken the lead in legislating around driverless cars. But the rest of the world is eager not to get left behind: French president Francois Hollande included driverless cars in his 10-year “roadmap” for the future last month; German researchers have already been testing their driverless cars in Berlin; and Japan is letting Nissan test their (nearly) autonomous car on the roads. Meanwhile over in Sweden, Volvo announced just this week that it will test 100 driverless cars in Gothenburg in 2017, in what was hailed as part of “the world’s first large-scale autonomous driving pilot.” 

The race is well and truly on.