Luminar Technologies, Inc. announced it would be standard on Volvo Cars’ forthcoming fully electric flagship vehicle. In addition, it sets a new benchmark for automotive safety.
The fully electric successor to Volvo Cars’ XC90, to be unveiled in 2022, is now set to come with state-of-the-art lidar hardware with Luminar’s Iris and perception from its Sentinel solution, in addition to an autonomous driving computer powered by NVIDIA DRIVE Orin™ and Zenseact and Volvo software. Volvo Cars aim to reduce fatalities and accidents as a whole with this new safety package.
“This is a watershed moment for the industry and Luminar’s most significant win towards establishing the next era of safety technology,” said Austin Russell, Luminar Founder and CEO. “Going from a select highway pilot option to Luminar powering all next-generation Volvo flagship cars as standard will kick off this new safety paradigm, catalyzing what we’ve been calling Proactive Safety. Volvo thinks life-saving technology shouldn’t be optional, and we couldn’t agree more.”
Volvo Cars aim to reduce collisions with the new safety package, and the reduction rate is anticipated to accelerate overtime via over-the-air software updates. The new technologies are also designed to specifically address traffic situations that result in large portions of severe injuries and fatalities.
“Volvo Cars is and always has been a leader in safety. It will now define the next level of car safety,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars. “By having this hardware as standard, we can continuously improve safety features over the air and introduce advanced autonomous drive systems, reinforcing our leadership in safety.”
Beyond the sensor suite and AI computing performance, Volvo’s forthcoming flagship model will also come with back-up systems for key functions such as steering and braking that make it hardware ready for safe, unsupervised autonomous driving once available. These control redundancies help enable the Highway Pilot functionality, an autonomous driving feature for motorways alongside the lidar and autonomous software. They will be activated for customers when verified safe for individual geographic locations and conditions.
Luminar’s CEO will join Volvo Cars Tech Moment, to be held on June 30, 2021 where more details will be revealed on its future technology roadmap.
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