Milton Keynes is one of the U.K’s New Towns, a planned community, inaugurated in the late 1960s. Located northwest of London off the M1, it is most famous as the location of Bletchley Park, where British mathematicians unscrambled Nazi Germany’s coded messages in World War Two.

But now the city is about to introduce its first batch of 20 podcars in 2015 which will initially operate on a designated right-of-way between the city’s railway station and its centre. If all goes well the program will expand to 100 podcars by 2017 and eventually will begin to operate on regular city streets.

Designed for two passengers, the Milton Keynes podcars will be restricted to speeds of 20 kilometers (12 miles) per hour. Passengers will be able to relax and sit back, checking email, reading their newspapers and generally enjoying the freedom of not having to watch the road.

Where are podcars running today? At Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 to the west of London where driverless podcars have been operating since May 2011. At Heathrow the vehicle is the Ultra Global PRT, (see image below on the right) 4-passenger, battery-powered and operating on its own right-of-way. The Ultra Global can also be found on location in Amritsar, India.