National implications of Sentience technology

The Sentience project has been careful to represent all principal types of UK road – including motorway, urban and rural ‘A’ roads, and minor roads – both within the simulation and modelling work that preceded the design of the vehicle control systems, and also within the testing carried out at TRL.

Using the results of fuel savings achieved on the TRL test track, the routes driven were scaled using Department for Transport data for vehicle-kilometres driven on different road types in the UK. This analysis demonstrated a potential total UK fuel saving of 14 per cent, equating to between 1.2 and 2.9 million barrels of oil per year.