Volvo is betting strongly on autonomous vehicles. China will be its new test ground.
Besides making beautiful looking cars, Volvo keeps on innovating the passenger safety – because, you know, that's what Volvo is renown for from the start. So they are planning on going radical when it comes to road safety, as in eliminating traffic deaths in their vehicles by 2020. "Yeah, sure. As long as there's a human behind the wheel of a car, that just won't be possible," you'll say. Volvo thought about the same thing, so they are planning to eliminate the human error by creating autonomous vehicles.
For now, the Chinese-owned Volvo announced a large-scale testing of autonomous vehicles in People's Republic. 100 Volvo units will make the subject of this study, one that involves handling rush-hour traffic in Chinese metropolises.
Unfortunately, it's not as easy as it looks (in case it looked easy in any way), because for the autonomous cars to walk around free, you'll need to score permissions, regulations, and infrastructure. In 2015, the Swedish carmaker announced autonomous vehicles testing in Gothenburg, the fifth-largest city in Thor's Land (a.k.a. the Nordic countries). If everything goes well, the tests there will start in 2017. If.
So I guess the Chinese-based study will not happen too soon. Even so, the fact that by 2020 we just might be driven by autonomous cars, in the maximum safety, it's nothing short of impressive.