Volvo's First Self-Driving Car Ready For Trial

Volvo has announced the first car of its self-driving automobile project has left the assembly line in Torslanda, Sweden and is ready for public trial.

Under the "Drive Me" project, Volvo XC90 SUVs are equipped with various sensors, radars, and cameras connected to a powerful computer called by Volvo as the "Autonomous Driving Brain." The crossover vehicles will be handed over to regular drivers in "autonomous drive zones" in Gothenburg in the coming months. By 2017, 100 such vehicles will go on Swedish roads for the first phase of testing, and in the United Kingdom and China for the second phase in the next few years.

The automaker said the project is more customer-focused, hoping to get insight from drivers' actual experience rather than engineers' tests. Volvo president and CEO Håkan Samuelsson said automated driving can make roads safer. "The sooner autonomous driving cars are on the roads, the sooner lives will start being saved," he added.

The Daily Mail cited several experts who suggested automated driving can prevent 95% of crashes. It also reported recent research saying driverless vehicles might increase road volume and energy consumption by 60%, as many people may opt out of public transportation.

Volvo is one of the companies leading the era of vehicle automation. It has recently partnered with Uber to ferry passengers in a trial using self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. The two companies said they would inject $300 million in the development of the project.

American automaker Tesla Motors is also developing self-driving technology it calls as AutoPilot. But the project has drawn criticism after a fatal accident in Florida on May 7, in which an AutoPilot car crashed into a truck. Following the accident, Tesla said it has made "small refinements" with its AutoPilot software.

Meanwhile, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is focusing on software and technology to be used in self-driving cars. But Google's project has been slow, leading some analysts to say the internet giant needs "a partner, sales force and a strategy."

On the other hand, Apple has recently laid off dozens of staff related to its electric car project code-named Titan. The New York Times reported the tech giant is "rethinking" its project, focusing instead on developing software rather than producing its own self-driving automobile.