Volvo Cars will use real-time data to set new safety standards

By Car Division, 28 July, 2021

The plan for the next generation of Volvo cars is to become the company's safest ever, thanks to groundbreaking software and hardware combined with constant and faster improvements to safety features using real-time data.

Volvo Cars have always based its approach to safety on accurate traffic data that has been used to develop new safety technologies and make electric cars even safer. For its next generation of electric cars, the company now plans to process real-time data from customer cars if customers provide access, thus helping Volvo Cars improve safety continuously.

By allowing customers to choose and help improve safety and road safety, Volvo Cars can implement much faster improvements to its electric cars and constantly optimize the level of safety. The plan is for this data to include constant input from the car's surroundings from sensors such as the high-resolution LiDAR from the technology company Luminar.

Volvo Cars technicians will be able to validate and verify autonomous driving functions (AD) faster to promote the safe roll-out of AD technology. Thanks to data generated by millions of miles, driven by tens of thousands of Volvo drivers across the globe, technicians will be able to validate AD features to specific geographic locations much faster than with a limited number of electric cars on a test track.

Verified updates to existing systems and new features can be quickly rolled out via the cloud, gradually increasing the safety of electric cars. The first electric car to benefit from this new approach to safety development is the company's first fully electric SUV.

"With real-life data, we can accelerate our development processes and go from year today," explains Ödgärd Andersson, CEO of Zenseact, Volvo's autonomous software development developer. Create better, higher-quality datasets, enabling us to make better and faster decisions about the next advances in security. We are in every process of creating a quantum leap to increase safety in and around our electric cars."

To process the real-time traffic data to be collected, Volvo Cars and Zenseact are investing in a data factory with a capacity of over 200 pebibytes (225 million gigabytes) of data within the next few years. Data can be crushed in record time using artificial intelligence. Furthermore, customers will be able to choose whether their data may be collected, and all collected data will be stored with adequate security measures in relation to buyers' privacy.

"Safety is part of our heritage and the backbone of our company, but the software is a crucial part of our modern DNA," says Mats Moberg, Head of R&D at Volvo Cars. "So as we continue to expand industry-leading Volvo Cars Accident Research Team's 50-year expertise, we can now also leverage artificial intelligence as a new, virtual accident research team. "

The use of real-time data is part of Volvo Cars' long-term vision for a future where collisions simply no longer happen because the company's electric cars are equipped with some of the best sensors available, and safety and autonomous driving systems are continuously improved.

Volvo Cars' upcoming fully electric SUV comes with the industry's leading safety technology as standard, which helps the company save even more lives and set a new standard for car safety. It will be equipped with advanced sensors, including a LiDAR from Luminar and an autonomous trip computer, controlled by NVIDIA DRIVE Orin 'system-on-a-chip as standard.

By combining this advanced hardware with software from Volvo Cars, Zenseact and Luminar for the next generation of its well-established collision avoidance technology, Volvo Cars expect the new safety package to reduce the number of traffic fatalities and accidents as a whole.

Little by little, the car will get better and have sufficient hardware and software capacity to take full control of the driver does not react after repeated warnings in life-threatening situations. So while the driver always has the ultimate control, the car and its safety technology can support and monitor the driver like an extra pair of eyes and an extra brain.

For Volvo Cars, electrification involves more than just changing drivelines. It represents a new standard in electric car design, and the Volvo Concept Recharge is a manifesto for the next generation of electric Volvos. Volvo's first generation of electric cars shares a floor with internal combustion engine cars, which requires a balance of proportions and space to accommodate both a battery pack and an internal combustion engine.

In Concept Recharge, these improvements have led the designers to move the seats, optimize the roof profile and lower the car's front helmet while maintaining the high seating position that is so popular with drivers of vehicles such as the Volvo XC40, XC60 and XC90. In addition, compared to a typical electric SUV, this approach creates aerodynamic efficiency gains, which improves range.

The Concept Recharge displays Volvo Cars' safety goals in the coming years. For example, a LiDAR sensor from the Luminar company, an essential part of Volvo Cars' plan for future safe, autonomous driving technology, is placed in the optimal position on the roof to collect data from the surroundings around the car. @via Volvo Cars.