Twenty-six minutes. That’s supposed to be the average time Americans take to commute to and from work. Excuse us while we sigh in envy. While we’re not seeing any immediate solutions for our own traffic woes, autonomous concept cars like the Concept 26 from Volvo would be godsend. Not only do we get our time back, it promises to keep us safe on the road, too.
Shown at the LA Auto Show, Volvo’s take on the autonomous driving trend isn’t like the Google concept car that doesn’t even come with a steering wheel. Volvo still wants to give you access to manual controls, since their research showed that car customers still want a steering wheel on the autonomous car. Volvo’s research also showed that people will use autonomous drive when they drive to and from work and while stuck in traffic (which we constantly face). During these times you probably won’t have someone else in your car, so there’s no need to swivel seats to face your companion. The company also claims people aren’t too keen on riding backwards anyway.
Volvo projects that autonomous cars will make its way to roads in the next five to 10 years so they foresee people still have to deal with a lot of road perils and horrendous traffic. The self-driving Volvos keep safety top of mind. They talk to Volvo’s server in the cloud first to make sure it’s safe to go autonomous. If it senses any dangers, it’ll keep the driver in control.
These autonomous cars will have three modes to choose from:
Drive is when the car is in full manual mode, meaning you’re still the one in control.
Create retracts the steering wheel and has a 25-inch flat-screen monitor show up from the passenger-side dashboard. There will be tablet of sorts coming out of the center console that would let you control the car’s functions and the large monitor. Volvo foresees that it could also integrate with your other mobile devices. There’s even a small table that shows up so you can place, say, your laptop there.
Relax reclines your seat further and lets you watch those shows you want to catch up on or just sit back and, well, relax.
When in autonomous mode, the dashboard will also just be showing a countdown timer instead of the tachometer to display how long you have left in autonomous mode. It’ll give you a minute or two to prepare yourself and take back control. If you aren’t ready, it will pull the car over to the side of the road.
The interiors of this concept car will be pretty close to what Volvo plans to use in their Drive Me program. The program will have them giving 100 autonomous-capable XC90 SUVs to people in its hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Source: The Verge
