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Volvo plans self-driving cars in 2014, envisions accident-free fleet by 2020
Long hailed as one of the safest car producers in the world, Volvo hopes to retain that reputation by introducing vehicles that can avoid passenger injuries on their own by the year 2020. Its plans hinge on eliminating the largest cause of road accidents -- the drivers themselves. The head of development for the program is convinced that driver-less cars are the future and that Volvo will be the first one there. The main technology underpinning Volvo's autonomous automobiles is wireless internet, which would enable each car to be assigned a certain point on the road and give different vehicles the ability to interact with each other. The company is preparing to release an initial batch of autonomous vehicles, capable of speeds of up to 31 miles per hour, in 2014. We know from the SARTRE project that the automaker has been able to achieve autonomous speeds of 53 miles per hour in traffic for long distances, though they aren't disclosing when those higher-speed prototypes would be publicly available.
Volvo's driverless road train in Spain is public mainly on the plain (video)
It's been awhile since we saw Volvo's SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) project, which was last running out of harm's way on a test track near Gothenburg. Volvo has just taken a big step forward in fostering confidence by conducting its road train on public asphalt. The 124-mile Spanish test both proved that the cars could stay driverless without posing a threat and upped the ante for what the cars could do: the lead truck, an S60, a V60 and an XC60 all moved along at a brisk 53MPH with a tighter gap between vehicles than there was in the original test, at just 20 feet. SARTRE was so successful in the public run that Volvo is now focusing on far less contentious issues -- like making sure fuel use drops by the promised 20 percent. There's still the looming question of making a viable business model, though Volvo's dream if realized will make sure no driverless car has to go solo.
Volvo's platooning SARTRE cars drive themselves, dabble in existentialism (video)
Tailgating on the highway is a pretty dangerous thing and, in some cases, can be a ticketable offense. In the future, though, it could be a way to ease traffic congestion and to boost fuel mileage on highways. In this guise it's called platooning, something that we saw GM's crazy futuristic EN-V doing when we took it for a spin out in Vegas. Volvo is getting in on the game too, participating in the European Safe Road Trains for the Environment Project, or SARTRE. It's a research program looking into a standard way to have "trains" of autonomous cars that can follow each other on the highway. A professional leads the way and other cars communicate with each other, enabling the drivers in those following cars to simply kick back and read the paper if they like. This is a project that could be seen on the road in as few as 10 years, but we're thinking by then people might need to find something else to read. %Gallery-114519%
