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Volvo Announces Autonomous Vehicle Project in Sweden

We are pretty sure most of you have seen numerous movies of cars driving themselves, leaving the driver to do whatever he wants. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just sleep an extra hour or catch up on your reading in the morning while you commute? Well, you might actually be seeing this in the near future.
Volvo autonomous vehicle 10 photos
Photo: Volvo
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Volvo has announced that they are planning to have the world’s first large-scale autonomous driving project in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The project is entitled “Drive Me” and consists of 100 autonomous vehicles that will travel on certain roads in and around Gothenburg. The ride won’t be an easy one as the roads span about 50km (31 miles) and cover both traditional commuter arteries and highways.

The goal of “Drive Me” is to show the societal and economic benefits of autonomous driving. Also, it showcases the infrastructure requirements needed for autonomous vehicles.

If we got your attention, know that the project will start next year, but unfortunately the first cars won’t be available for driving until 2017. Although the guys from Volvo have not given to much information, they have confirmed that the vehicles will be “new models” that ride on the Scalable Product Architecture. This could mean the XC90 (or S90) is involved, since its their next all-new model. The XC90 has been a sort of technological flagship for Volvo, a bit like their S-Class, but it still seems like for the pilot program they are using the S60 and V60.

Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson stated that “Autonomous vehicles are an integrated part of Volvo Cars’ as well as the Swedish government’s vision of zero traffic fatalities. This public pilot represents an important step towards this goal."

Therefore, their goal is to study autonomous cars ,how consumers interact with them and see if these particular vehicles can ensure a safer driving experience.
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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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