Volvo autonomous car - Australia

Volvo Announces ‘Drive Me London,’ the ‘Largest and Most Ambitious Autonomous Driving Trial Yet’

Jennifer van der Kleut

In an announcement on the automaker’s website, Volvo says it is prepping to launch “the largest and most ambitious autonomous driving trial yet.”

The trial, which they say will take place in the United Kingdom, is called “Drive Me London,” and aims to “speed up the introduction of a technology that promises to massively reduce car accidents, as well as free up congested roads and save drivers valuable time.”

The unprecedented trial will allow Londoners to lease autonomous cars for public testing on pre-mapped streets and routes, and will collect data on the cars’ performance.

Interestingly, the cars will be fully autonomous. Volvo says there will never be any need for the driver’s to take back control of the car, in any situation, and reps say the passengers will be able to “fully disengage”-meaning, they can surf the Web, watch TV or even sleep.

“Spend time reading a book or watching a video. The car will be able to drive itself and handle any situation that might arise on the roadway,” Volvo representatives told The Verge.

Similar trials will take place in Volvo’s home nation of Sweden and in China.

Volvo says it has been hard at work reducing fatal and injury accidents since the 1950s, reminding consumers that it revolutionized auto safety when it introduced the three-point seatbelt in 1959.

Volvo said its work on the development of autonomous drive technology is all part of the company’s commitment to “zero-fatality” cars by the year 2020.

While the idea may sound lofty, it’s not that far-fetched. Volvo has long tracked the number of injuries and deaths that happen in its cars. For example, with the previous generation of its model XC90, only one person died. In the car’s current generation, data from the Institute for Highway Safety indicate zero deaths between 2009 to 2012.

Volvo says, between its work on car safety enhancements and its progress toward fully autonomous cars, “No one will be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo by the year 2020.”

Volvo’s announcement says Drive Me London will begin in 2017.

This isn’t the first time Volvo’s name appeared in headlines this week. The automaker’s senior technical lead for crash avoidance, Trent Victor, caused quite a stir when he called competitor Tesla Motor Company’s Autopilot system “an unsupervised wannabe.

Victor reportedly criticized Tesla’s Autopilot system because even when it is turned on, Tesla encourages the person in the driver’s seat to keep their hands on the wheel and stay alert, ready to take control back from the car when needed.

Victor says such a system is pointless and irresponsible, since any notion of autonomous mode makes people want to do other things such as nap or check emails. He said Volvo is close to perfecting Level 4 autonomy that is capable of responding to any type of situation with no involvement from the driver or passenger at all.

“We take responsibility,” Victor said in an interview with The Verge.