Volvo Cars has officially kicked off Drive Me, declaring it ‘the world’s most ambitious and advanced public autonomous driving experiment’.
It has produced the very first autonomous car that will be used in the project in Gothenburg: the Volvo XC90 SUV. The vehicle was finalized in Volvo’s special manufacturing facility in Torslanda and is the first in a series of autonomous cars that will eventually be handed to real families in Gothenburg to be driven on public roads.
Volvo believes the introduction of AD technology promises to reduce collisions. Furthermore, AD technology promises to free up congested roads, reduce pollution and allows drivers to use their time in their cars more valuably.
Volvo says its customer-focused approach sets the Drive Me project apart from other autonomous driving experiments. Instead of relying purely on the research of its own engineers, Volvo aims to collect feedback and inputs from real customers using these autonomous cars in their everyday lives.
By choosing this customer-focused approach, Volvo aims to further fine-tune its autonomous driving technologies and make its offering as relevant as possible to customers ahead of a commercial introduction around 2021.
“This is an important milestone for the Drive Me project,” said Erik Coelingh, Senior Technical Leader Active Safety at Volvo Cars, as he observed the final touches being put to the car. “Customers look at their cars differently than us engineers, so we are looking forward to learn how they use these cars in their daily lives and what feedback they will give us.”
The customer cars will undergo a rigorous testing phase to ensure that the technology functions exactly as it should. Once this testing phase is finalized the cars will be handed over to the customers participating in the Drive Me pilot.
The Drive Me pilot project in Gothenburg is the first in a number of planned public trials with autonomous driving Volvo cars. A similar project to the one in Gothenburg will be launched in London next year, while Volvo is also assessing bids from interested cities in China to launch a Drive Me project there within the next few years.
