AURRIGO INSIGHT
THE POD SQUAD
Self-driving vehicles aren’t a million miles away but at our doorstep.
By Jim Holder
PHOTOGR APHY LUC LACEY
Autonomous cars were once the hottest topic in the A automotive industry, developed at vast expense by everyone from existing manufacturers to ambitious interlopers and set to revolutionise everything from personal mobility to the fundamentals of car design. And now? Maybe not so much. While the concept is far from abandoned, the vigour with which it is being pursued is dampened. Ford and Volkswagen have dumped their joint venture, Renault describes the technology as a “moonshot” and Tesla is still a long way from putting anything on sale that lives up to its Full Self-Driving nomenclature.
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Yet in a corner of Coventry, on the very foundations of the Humber car company (maker of the Hawk, Snipe, Sceptre and more until 1967), is a thriving British firm that apparently didn’t get the memo. Starting out as a family-owned business, Aurrigo is now a public company worth tens of millions of pounds – and with the potential, thanks to its pre-eminence in autonomous technology and, ironically, its eyes on more realistic goals, for many multiples of that.