In Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2017, testers will be able to do this in self-driving cars. All photos courtesy Volvo.
Sweden to Embark on Automated Driving Test Starting this year, Sweden’s Volvo Car Group plans to embark on an ambitious program that could see 100 self-driving cars on the busy streets of Gothenburg. Customer research and technology development for what Volvo is calling the Drive Me program begins this year, with actual cars appearing on public roads in 2017. The effort is a joint venture between Volvo, the Swedish Transport 24
MISSION CRITICAL
Agency, Lindholmen Science Park and the city of Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest and home to about one million residents in the metro area. The cars will eventually appear on 50 kilometers of selected roads in and around the city. The move is driven by Volvo’s vision of zero traffic fatalities, says Hakan Samuelsson, president and CEO, and will “give us an insight into the technological challenge at
the same time as we get valuable feedback from real customers driving on public roads.” The cars to be involved in the program will be new ones, including the XC90, which is to be introduced this year. They will be built on what Volvo calls the Scalable Product Architecture, which will allow the company to continuously introduce new support and safety systems, “all the way to technologies that enable highly autonomous drive,” the company says in a press release. The cars will be capable of autonomous driving, but drivers can take control at any time as needed. The cars will also be able to park themselves without the driver being in the car at all, allowing them to get out at a parking garage while the car finds a spot and parks. Part of the technology includes developing a user interface and cloud functionality, according