Owning an electric car has become trendy over the past few years. These are environmentally conscious car buyers who are looking for vehicles that are able to help them fulfill their daily activities but are considerably green and don’t leave a massive carbon footprint.

Now however, there is an overflowing interest in autonomous vehicles. Contemporary cars and SUVs that are able to traverse city streets unaided by a human driver, maneuver past obstacles, slow down and speed up as well as anticipate an impending emergency situation and apply brakes where necessary -all on its own.

These systems are expensive to develop and deploy. That is why only more established vehicle manufacturers with huge budgets, are able delve into the murky waters of autonomous transportation of the future. Now, thanks to a company named StreetDrone, any manufacturer, big or small, has access to such technology.

StreetDrone, a UK based company, has teamed up with Renault to develop an autonomous vehicles that is affordable enough for small automotive firms to use as a platform for developing autonomous technology. The base car is a Renault Twizy EV, and with it, the company fits their latest hardware to govern the movements of the car. The OS that runs on the hardware is the company’s StreetDrone OS which allows the car to talk to connected and autonomous software.The finished vehicle is called the StreetDrone One.

Developers, can develop coding that can can be installed in this vehicle, to test and improve new autonomous functionality. This will provide small firms the head start they need in their R&D programmes aimed at developing sustainable future autonomous transport.

Mark Preston, CEO of StreetDrone says “We know that the greatest innovations in self-driving technology need to come from a wide-base of companies and developers, not from the privileged few that are wealthy enough to be able to test innovation in the real world. StreetDrone ONE means that everyone can become a part of the autonomous revolution.”

If the programme does become a success, it would mean that companies like Apple, Google and Intel, no longer have the advantage of their bank accounts to develop the best autonomous vehicles for the average car buyer. That’s good news for us consumers because this would mean that in the not so distant future, we will have a variety of vehicle manufacturers that are able to provide cutting edge technology for the autonomous transportation market.