Volvo will deliver around 100 units of specially equipped autonomous XC90 SUVs in Sweden as part of ‘Drive Me’ program
Volvo has started delivering its self driving XC90 SUVs in Sweden under the luxury auto brand’s ‘Drive Me’ program. The automaker will deliver around 100 units of the specially equipped self driving XC90 SUVs. First two families have already received these vehicles and the cars are said to help in development of future self driving technologies.
During their ownership, the owners need to keep their hands on steering wheel of the cars and monitor the SUVs all the time. Volvo says it will introduce more advanced driver assisting technologies in coming days and drivers too will get special training from the company. All these tests involving these specially equipped XC90s will take place in controlled environment.
Also read: Volvo To Launch Only Electrified Cars In India Post 2019
Volvo has been testing the autonomous driving technology enabled XC90 SUVs for quite some time and the engineers of the company have already gathered numerous amount of data for the further development of the driverless driving tech. Now, this ‘Drive Me’ program will benefit the engineers of Volvo with necessary data like human behaviour and how the families interact with their cars.
As Volvo says, ‘Drive Me’ program is an important research and development project for the brand. The automaker hopes to learn a lot by engaging the families with these specially equipped vehicles. The company also says that it will use the owners’ experiences to improve the autonomous driving technology keeping future mobility in focus.
Also read: 2018 Volvo XC60 SUV Launched In India At Rs. 55.90 Lakh
As we have already reported Volvo has been working on couple of major projects for quite some time. These are zero emission pure electric powertrain, autonomous driving technology and advanced safety features. The company aims to launch its fully autonomous car in global market by 2021. Currently, Tesla and Volvo both offer semi-autonomous driving technology in several of their cars, but those are not fully autonomous tech.
While the world market is pretty excited about driverless technology, India is not ready for the tech properly. As the Indian government also opposed the concept of driverless technology as it would make many people jobless.