Gothenburg in Sweden is the setting for Volvo’s current round of testing of autonomous cars, a project known as ‘Drive Me’. The project will eventually see 100 self-driving vehicles driving around the Swedish city, on a pre-selected collection of roads that total around 50km in length.
Volvo’s ‘Drive Me’ initiative has the backing of “legislators, transport authorities, a major city, a vehicle manufacturer and real customers”, according to the company, and this test will be putting Volvo’s experimental vehicles through their paces in a variety of everyday conditions, a lot like Google’s current efforts in Mountain View, California. Volvo says that the Autopilot system that their vehicles are using are “…performing well.”
Erik Coelingh, Technical Specialist at Volvo Car Group, said “The test cars are now able to handle lane following, speed adaption and merging traffic all by themselves. This is an important step towards our aim that the final ‘Drive Me’ cars will be able to drive the whole test route in highly autonomous mode. The technology, which will be called Autopilot, enables the driver to hand over the driving to the vehicle, which takes care of all driving functions.”