Driverless vehicles 'within a decade'

The chief executive of General Motors told delegates at the Consumer Electronics Show that driverless cars will be a reality in a decade or less.

Rick Wagoner, delivering the first CES keynote by an automotive producer, said that advances in the automatic control of vehicles are bearing fruit, and unveiled a prototype Chevy Tahoe being developed by his company.

"The future of the auto is bright and increasingly electronic. Autonomous driving means that someday you could do your email, eat breakfast, do your makeup and watch a video while commuting to work," he said.

"In other words, you could do all the things you do now while commuting to work but do them safely."

General Motors plans to test driverless cars by 2015 and have them in production by 2018.

The company has been heavily involved in the move towards automatic cars, and provided the winning entry in this year's Darpa Urban Challenge.

The cars of the future will also communicate with each other, according to Wagoner, so that if one has to break sharply the cars will behind slow down automatically.

General Motors is also introducing Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, a system that automatically shuts down the engine of a stolen car in an effort to cut the 30,000 high-speed pursuits that take place on America's roads every year.

Wagoner also unveiled the Chevy Provoq, a concept car that uses a hydrogen fuel cell, a solar cell roof and lithium batteries for power. It can reach 0-60 in 8.5 seconds and run for 300 miles on a tank of hydrogen.