F O C U S 9 ‹Dr. Peter Mertens›: In theory, autonomous driving has huge potential to make traffic safer, more environmentally friendly and more efficient. Apart from that, an autonomous to do other things. Our research is focusing on how to derive the maximum It is our objective to put100 selfdriving City of Gothenburg in 2017, as part of the ‘Drive Me’ project. With this project, we are collecting valuable insights with regard to technology also be getting a chance to analyze legal issues. These autonomous vehicles customers, travelling on selected roads typical of daily commuter routes with stop-and-go traffic. This is a first significant step that brings us closer to highly automated will be a long time before this is possible in all markets and on all types of roads. Our priority, to begin > vehicle gives drivers time potential from this technology in practice. vehicles on the road in the and customer acceptance. We’ll are designed for normal Volvo real driving, but I expect that it with, is therefore to focus on > Pioneering Demonstration vehicle with pure electric drive: Volvo C30 electric. automatizing unattractive driving situations, e.g. parking or stopand go traffic. Already today, the new Volvo XC90 features semi-autonomous functions such as the pilot assistant or the parking assistant. This range of features is undergoing constant further development and is available in other vehicles as well. ‹F›: Emotion plays a key role when buying a car. Do you think it will Volvo is conducting a car-to-car communication test: 1000 vehicles are collecting information about slippery road surfaces, which can then be shared with other vehicles using the ‘Volvo cloud’. remain this way in the future? And how are you going to offer Volvo drivers a good portion of driving enjoyment in your models, despite all the demands on efficiency and environmental considerations. ‹Dr. Peter Mertens›: Purchasing a vehicle will always be an emotional experience, particularly in the vehicle segments Volvo caters to. We have demonstrated that there is no contradiction between environmental sustainability and driving pleasure. In this respect, charging, which is one of Volvo’s core competencies, is the key technology. The consistent implementation of the SPA platform combined with our highly efficient and agile Drive-E powertrain have given engineers a great amount of freedom of design. This allows us to put extremely attractive and spacious vehicles on the road. Paired with our leadership in active and passive safety technologies, we offer a line-up that is hard to resist. Arrange a test drive to convince yourself of our new XC90. <
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