Volvo’s done a lot to innovate motor vehicles. The seatbelt in its current form comes from the Swedish car maker. Now it’s launching something wholly new — radar.
But not radar outside the vehicle. That’s been done before. This is introspective radar. It looks inward. It sees what other radars do not. And what it sees is that you’ve left a puppy or a small child asleep on the back seat. And the window’s not open and the air conditioner isn’t on.
Volvo evolves
The feature — and it’s definitely a feature — will arrive in the company’s EX90 EV, due to be revealed in November this year. It’ll be standard in that, and other, models, provided the countries they’re sold in are okay with it. Volvo’s radar technology has one purpose — to make sure you don’t leave anything alive in your car on a hot day.
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It sounds a bit morbid if we put it that way, but you’ve got us all wrong. Sensors mounted in the roof, the overhead console, and the rear of Volvo’s vehicles are able to sense sub-millimetre movement. Like, say, the breathing of a sleeping pet or infant?
In the event that you forget they’re there, the Volvo EX90 will simply refuse to lock itself until you check the car. If you still don’t notice, and wander off, then the vehicle will activate its climate control system and run it for as long as the battery lasts.
Volvo says that more than 900 kids have died in the States since 1998 after being locked in cars on hot days. The company isn’t planning on adding to that number. Its occupant-sensing radar should go a long way towards meeting that goal. So long, in fact, that we’re expecting to see the feature as standard across other vehicle lineups as well. That’s not official — that’s just a feeling.