Partner Veoneer reported that a joint venture of Volvo Cars managed to acquire the approval for conducting “hands-free” tests of its self-driving cars’ software on the highways of Sweden.
According to Veoneer, the software of Zenuity for “Level 4 autonomous driving”, which is the “second highest” level, will be featured in a Volvo car for testing purpose wherein trained drivers will remain inside the vehicles but will keep their “hands off the steering wheel” when the vehicle reached “at a maximum speed of 80 kilometres per hour”.
In the competition of developing self-driving cars, the above mentioned ventured seems to “striving” in order to “keep up” with its “larger rivals”. Currently, the U.S. companies seem to lead the race as we have “Google’s Waymo” winning the approval for the first time last year to carry out test drives on the public roads of California “without safety drivers”.
Cruise from General Motors revealed that the company was all prepared to start rolling out vehicles without any manual controls. Similarly, BMW as well as Audi have also managed to secure licences for their vehicles’ road test. Following a fatal accident of a vehicle that was being tested for self-driving software by Uber, the regulators tightened the grip over permission grants. However, Uber seems to have resumed public road tests last month, although on a limited scale.
In Sweden, Zenuity is already carrying out tests for driverless technology on public roads with the conditions of drivers keeping “at least one hand on the wheel at all times” and of mainting the maximum speed limit of 60kmph.
In the words of the chief technology officer at Veoneer, Nishant Batra, the approval of road tests was “essential for gathering important data and test functions”.
“It is a strong proof-point for the progress of Zenuity’s self-driving capabilities”.
As per Reuters:
“Zenuity, formed by Volvo and Veoneer in 2017, is expected to have its first driver assistance products available for sale by 2019 with autonomous driving technologies following shortly thereafter. Volvo will be a customer”.
References:
reuters.com
According to Veoneer, the software of Zenuity for “Level 4 autonomous driving”, which is the “second highest” level, will be featured in a Volvo car for testing purpose wherein trained drivers will remain inside the vehicles but will keep their “hands off the steering wheel” when the vehicle reached “at a maximum speed of 80 kilometres per hour”.
In the competition of developing self-driving cars, the above mentioned ventured seems to “striving” in order to “keep up” with its “larger rivals”. Currently, the U.S. companies seem to lead the race as we have “Google’s Waymo” winning the approval for the first time last year to carry out test drives on the public roads of California “without safety drivers”.
Cruise from General Motors revealed that the company was all prepared to start rolling out vehicles without any manual controls. Similarly, BMW as well as Audi have also managed to secure licences for their vehicles’ road test. Following a fatal accident of a vehicle that was being tested for self-driving software by Uber, the regulators tightened the grip over permission grants. However, Uber seems to have resumed public road tests last month, although on a limited scale.
In Sweden, Zenuity is already carrying out tests for driverless technology on public roads with the conditions of drivers keeping “at least one hand on the wheel at all times” and of mainting the maximum speed limit of 60kmph.
In the words of the chief technology officer at Veoneer, Nishant Batra, the approval of road tests was “essential for gathering important data and test functions”.
“It is a strong proof-point for the progress of Zenuity’s self-driving capabilities”.
As per Reuters:
“Zenuity, formed by Volvo and Veoneer in 2017, is expected to have its first driver assistance products available for sale by 2019 with autonomous driving technologies following shortly thereafter. Volvo will be a customer”.
References:
reuters.com