By building a car that’s able to drive entirely by itself on the highway by the year 2021, Volvo would be challenging the likes of BMW, which already promised to develop fully autonomous tech within the next five years.
The Swedish automaker will start testing vehicles with advanced autonomous features next year in Gothenburg, Sweden, London and China, with a planned 100 test cars for each country – driven by ordinary customers instead of engineers.
According to Autonews, Volvo is still looking for collaborators to help them achieve their 2021 target, unlike BMW which is already working with both Intel and Mobileye.
“It’s our ambition to have a car that can drive fully autonomously on the highway by 2021,” said company CEO Hakan Samuelsson in a recent interview. “This technology is something as a carmaker you cannot develop by yourself.“
While technology that allows people to remove their hands from the steering wheel has come under fire recently, Volvo does have a reputation of building extremely safe cars, which might in turn help them market any new driver-assistance system as something the public need not worry about.
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