While not exactly Kitt from Knight Rider, this modified VW Passat is by far the most expensive veedub coming in at a cool £1 million to develop and produce. The car has laser-guided "eyes" that sense its position and take action should it encounter potholes, buildings and hopefully pedestrians. It is steered by computer, but unfortunately, it does sport the vocal talents of Anthony Daniels.

Dubbed the Lux, the car will even pull up from its parking place to collect you from the pub, sorry, supermarket. At the moment the car is on show at the Science Museum. Volker Willhoeft, the project leader of the Team-LUX, the company behind the car, said the project took six months to complete and was kitted out with enough technology to make sure it stays on the road.

The car will compete in a driverless car challenge in the US which will see the automobile trying to complete a 60-mile course against over computer-driven vehicles. One of these cars, developed by scientists at Intel and Stanford, is also a VW Passat. The third annual US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge will see cars from all over the world compete against each other without humans behind the wheel.

"We are competing against the world's best in terms of automobile technology," said Ulrich Lages chief executive of Ibeo who provided the software to guide the car. "Although we are a relatively small team and, unlike the big players, do not have a large budget, we believe we have a great chance at DARPA 2007," he said.

"Our innovative laser technology gives us a lead of several years over our prospective rivals, especially in the field of object and
environmental detection."

The company hopes to see some of the technology make it into normal production cars, but a fully-automated car is still years away, so the cab it is for now.