Volvo gives you back your commuting time with new concept

Create mode

Volvo’s new concept car has been named after the average number of time an American spends in the car to drive to work. While 26 minutes might be on the dot for you or slightly more or less than that, what Concept 26 has in mind is to give you back some of your time.

Shown at the LA Auto Show, Volvo’s take on the autonomous driving trend isn’t like the steering wheel-less Google concept car hopes to bring into the future. What Volvo wants is still give you access to manual controls, since their research showed that car customers still want a steering wheel on the autonomous car. Volvo’s research also showed that people will use autonomous drive when they drive to and from work and while stuck in traffic. And at this time you probably won’t have someone else in your car, so no need to swivel seats to face your companion. The company also claims people aren’t too keen on riding backwards anyway.

Volvo projects that autonomous cars will make its way to roads in the next five to 10 years so they foresee people still have to deal with a lot of road perils. Keeping safety top of mind, the self-driving Volvos talk to Volvo’s server in the cloud first to make sure it’s safe to go autonomous. If it senses any dangers or concerns about weather and whatnot, it’ll keep the driver in control.

Relax mode

These autonomous cars will have three modes to choose from: Drive, Create, and Relax. Drive is when the car is in full manual mode. Create retracts the steering wheel and has a 25-inch flat-screen monitor show up from the passenger-side dashboard. There will be tablet of sorts coming out of the center console that would let you control the car’s functions as well as control the large monitor. And it could also integrate with your other mobile devices. Relax, as it names suggests, reclines your seat further and lets you watch those shows you want to catch up on or just sit back and, well, relax. When in autonomous mode, the dashboard will also just be showing a countdown timer of how long you have left in autonomous mode. It’ll give you a minute or two to prepare yourself and take back control. If you aren’t ready, it will pull the car over.

The interiors of this car will be pretty close to what Volvo plans to use in their Drive Me program, where they will give 100 autonomous-capable XC90 SUVs to people in its hometown of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Source: The Verge