While he admits that Five AI is going to need more investment to fully develop its vehicles, he says it can do it more cheaply than its rivals, because it doesn’t need to employ the vast number of supplementary staff that they do.

“There is always a team of 20 to 50 people [at any driverless car company] that is really driving the technology,” he says. “That is what it comes down to.

“So while Google’s Waymo has [an estimated] 3,500 people, and Uber a couple of thousand, it really all comes down to just a handful of individuals.

“And the talent in computer vision and machine learning here in Europe is as strong as in the US.”

Based across six offices in the UK – London, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and at a testing track in Bedfordshire – Five AI also works closely with computer vision and artificial intelligence teams at the UK’s top universities, and the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s leading AI research centre.

Mr Boland says that he wants all of his staff to “feel ownership of the company”, so all are given shares in the business.

This is a policy he has insisted on throughout his career, as he believes it makes employees more committed, more hardworking.

Back when he sold Element 14 it meant that most staff became millionaires overnight. “The least anyone made from the sale was a part-time secretary, and she received £250,000.”