Google Autonomous Car Fleet Set To Expand

Google has been operating a fleet of 24 Lexus RX450h crossovers equipped with autonomous driving features for the past few years in and around its Mountain View, California headquarters. Those cars have been logging about 10,000 miles a week, mostly on city streets, but Google says it will soon be sending them into other areas to test how well they handle bad weather, heavy traffic and varied terrain.

The Google autonomous car fleet is being expanded. 25 of the Roush built cars will be placed in service over the next few months. Those cars will be limited to speeds of 25 miles an hour and operated only on city streets near company headquarters. They are equipped with steering wheels, accelerators and brake pedals to comply with California law but those items are removable. The cars will add to Google’s research into how autonomous cars deal with traffic and pedestrians.

Google is interested in exploring how the cars behave in what it calls the 0.001% of situations that are outside of normal parameters. Those are events that most drivers encounter only once every 100,000 miles. Most of the testing of the new autonomous cars will probably take place at the nearby Ames Research Center, where the company will not need to have human drivers on board like it does when the cars are operated on public streets.

Google has been in the news lately because of reports its autonomous cars have been involved in 11 minor traffic accidents over the past 5 years. It says it will “begin posting regular updates on how things are going (e.g. interesting trends and incidents we’ve experienced).” It claims none of those 11 accidents were serious or was caused by of a malfunction on one of its cars. But the press and the legal eagles are circling, looking for any information that would make the basis of a good news story or lawsuit.

The Future According To Volvo

Volvo has always been different. It started by building some of the safest cars around, then fitting them with passenger safety items like seat belts and air bags that eventually became standard equipment on all cars. If you were about the have a close encounter with a Peterbilt, you definitely wanted to be driving a Volvo when it happened.

Today, the automotive world has been turned upside down by the advent of electric cars and autonomous driving systems. Volvo has looked at all these trends and plotted a course for its future that steers away from the more extreme visions of both.

No all electric Tesla fighters or self driving Google cars for them. In the world of Volvo, people will continue to pilot their cars manually most of the time and those cars will continue to have internal combustion engines to eliminate any whiff of range anxiety. Very sensible. Very prudent. Very Volvo.

In a recent conversation with AutoBlog, Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo’s CEO, said his company believes traditional hybrids are the future.

“We’re rather clear on that. With a pure battery car, OK, you can do it, if you have it as a hobby car, no problem. But if you want a real car, I mean if you really want to go somewhere, skiing or whatever, then it’s difficult to have this limitation in range,” he says. “So I think it’s much more realistic to have a hybrid.”

“I think in the future there will be an evolution, also maybe downsizing of the engines, and more batteries, more powerful batteries, and then you can call that an electric car with a range extender. It’s exactly the same technology. So, that’s the path we have chosen.”

Volvo also thinks autonomous cars will be the next big thing and expects to be a major player in that technology. But once again, it has a slightly different take on things.

“Our vision for real autonomous driving, is that you don’t do it from A to B, like Google. There’s no market for such a device, it’s too unsafe. So you drive manually, like an aircraft takes off and lands manually, but if you reach a boring passage, that’s when you press ‘auto.’

You will see on a map that autonomous driving is now possible, and you will be able to select it, but it will go beyond today’s semi-autonomous systems that only follow the car in front of you. It will be able to automatically change lanes, and overtake cars, and so on.”

Finally, Volvo is committed to uncluttering the interior controls of new cars. Where most cars today have dozens of knobs and buttons, the interior of the forthcoming XC 90 features a large touch screen with only 8 knobs.

“We want to work with connectivity, the HMI interface, and the touchscreen, to make them simple to use. We want to get away from button-heavy cabins, the car has to be simple, but understand you.”

Until the all electric car becomes mainstream, Volvo will continue doing what it has done for generations — build high quality, reliable and safe cars that meet or exceed the needs of modern drivers. Would you expect anything less from Volvo?