cover story 8 F O C U S In our effort to prevent accidents, we’ll continue to improve our passive safety technologies and protection against accidental road departure. An excellent example for this is our new Volvo XC90. Active safety, however, shows the greatest potential for achieving our vision, i.e. to help drivers to avoid collisions. Volvo uses radar, camera and communication technologies to monitor the vehicle in road traffic, assisting the driver with information, warnings and automatic intervention. To make sure that this technology helps to avoid accidents to the greatest extent possible, we decided to integrate the entire suite of safety features into the standard safety package of the new Volvo XC90. This standard safety package is totally unique in the automotive industry and illustrates clearly that we are bent on getting closer to our vision. Car-to-car communication is employed in addition to the vehicle sensors to obtain information about traffic and road conditions beyond the driver’s visual range, or about features that are difficult to measure. For example, we are conducting a large-scale test on road conditions; 1000 vehicles are collecting information about slippery road surfaces (position and type), which can then be shared with other vehicles using our ‘Volvo cloud’. ‹F›: Right now everyone is talking about ‘piloted driving.’ How do you see partially autonomous and autonomous driving in the near future? And do you think it will only be used in special driving situations, e.g. stop-and-go traffic, or universally, i.e. anytime and anywhere? DR. PETER MERTENS SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HEAD OF RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT, VOLVO CAR CORPORATION Dr. Peter Mertens was born in Germany in 1961 and has been interested in cars since he was a young boy. Following an apprenticeship as a toolmaker he completed a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the US in 1985. He later went on to complete his doctorate in Production Engineering and Industrial Engineering at the University of Kaiserslautern. Peter Mertens started his career in the automotive industry in 1990. He has since had broad experience in different countries in Europe, as well as the USA and Asia. He also has experience across a wide variety of roles including product development and aftersales engineering at Mercedes Benz. More recently he held the position of Global Vehicle Line Executive at General Motors. In 2010 he was responsible for Jaguar Land Rover‘s quality and safety performance globally. He reported directly to Jaguar Land Rover Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ralf Speth. Since April 1, 2011 Dr. Peter Mertens has been Senior Vice President, Head of Research & Development, of the Volvo Car Corporation. Dr. Peter Mertens is married and he has three children.
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