For Volvo, driverless cars won't mean the end of manual driving
Just because Volvo wants to champion driverless cars doesn't mean it wants to kill manual driving either.
“We have no ambition to have a car that could drive in urban environments from A to B,” Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson told Car and Driver.
“If you’re a normal consumer is that really what you are dreaming about?” Samuelsson asked. Adding, "We believe more that in a situation where it’s not really fun to drive you can switch on the autopilot and then sit back and do something else, use that time more productively. That is the product that we are developing.”
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To me, this revelation comes as a bit of a surprise.
The majority of respondents to Volvo's Future of Driving survey have indicated they enjoy driving for pleasure once a week. Because of that, Volvo has said it aims to preserve manual driving. I get that.
However, it wasn't clear Volvo was not in fact aiming to create self-driving systems that could handle any driving situation -- not just freeway driving. And that's exactly what Samuelsson's quote seems to indicate.
By not having an autonomous driving system that could handle every driving situation, it would pretty much negate the purpose. I mean, how would the elderly who can't safely drive anymore benefit from a car that won't drive itself in urban environments and requires them to drive in the city? Also, how would an autonomous car-based public transit system, like the one planned in Beverly Hills, work?
Not only that, a driverless system that only worked on freeways would leave Volvo lagging behind Google, which is hard at work on mastering inner-city driving -- an autonomous driving system's biggest challenge.
I am hoping this was simply Samuelsson accidentally misrepresenting Volvo's future self-driving plans. Because, if he's right, Volvo will be way off the mark.
Mashable has reached out to Volvo for further clarification but has not received response.
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Topics Self-Driving Cars Cars
