Autonomous Volvos to hit London by 2017

Within the next year or so, Londoners could find themselves sharing the road with a fleet of autonomous Volvos.

An unlike other autonomous driving trials, this one won’t involve a bunch of scientists and engineers carefully observing what the cars get up to. Instead, real families, travelling on real routes will be ferried around by the autonomous fleet.

The Swedish car maker says it will source its data from these everyday users and use this data to develop AD cars that are suitable for real world driving conditions, rather than the more unrealistic conditions found on test tracks.

Drive Me London will begin in early 2017 with a limited number of semi-autonomous driving cars and expand in 2018 to include up to 100 AD cars. According to Volvo, that will make it the largest and most extensive AD testing programme on Britain’s streets.

“Autonomous driving represents a leap forward in car safety,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive. “The sooner AD cars are on the roads, the sooner lives will start being saved.”