U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx made a significant announcement at the Detroit Auto Show on Thursday. According to Foxx, the president's 2017 budget includes a mammoth $4 billion fund over 10 years in order to pilot self-driving car projects and developments across the country, according to USA Today.
Apart from the $4 billion budget, Foxx further stated that the United States would witness a number of initiatives that would prepare the country for a new era of self-driving cars within the next six months.
Foxx's announcement echoes U.S. President Barack Obama's agenda that was outlined in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. In the address, the president encouraged a prominent shift toward a greener manner of transportation.
"I'm going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. That way, we put money back into those communities and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system," the speech read, according to Medium.
With the current pace of the technology and with the additional government funding, a number of experts across the U.S. believe that the country will see a surge in autonomous vehicles by 2020.
The adoption of autonomous vehicles has already been embraced by a number of tech giants, including Google and Tesla. Even Apple, famous for its development of the iPhone and the Mac, has allegedly been developing its own self-driving car, reports the Canada Journal.
