THE £3 billion dualling of the A9 could be a “huge waste of money” by failing to plan ahead for driverless and electric cars, it has been claimed.

The 80-mile stretch between Perth and Inverness is subject to the multi-billion pound upgrade to increase its capacity.

But Derek Halden, secretary of the Scottish Transport Studies Group, says the works are redundant as autonomous vehicles will travel close together in “road trains”, with an extra lane needed only around junctions for merging traffic. The civil engineer also called for recharging technology to be embedded in the road surface to top up electric vehicle batteries as they drive.

He told the Scotland on Sunday: “Investing in the road network requires as fundamental a rethink as took place when cars replaced horses.

“In general, more lanes have helped improve safety and efficiency with manually driven cars, but it may well be that fewer lanes or simpler road configurations could speed up cars and improve safety as we depend more heavily on autonomous vehicles. Anyone building a new long-distance route must plan for the route to be used by autonomous vehicles.”

In response, a spokesman for Transport Scotland agency said: “We will consider the issue of charging points for electrical vehicles as we progress the design work.”

Neil Greig, of the IAM RoadSmart motoring group, added: “Driverless cars will have to cope with current road designs or will fail. A dual carriageway is future- proofing the road. It allows shared use of human and computer-driven cars for at least 25 years and then full driverless operation.”