Volvo Plans To Launch Ride Pilot In 2023, The Latest Feature Of Driverless Cars

Volvo Cars will soon launch the Ride Pilot. (photo credit: volvovars.com)

JAKARTA - Volvo Cars and self-driving sensor maker Luminar Technologies Inc said on Wednesday, January 5, a hands-free driving system called "Ride Pilot" will be released first in California. Unfortunately the two companies did not provide a specific date when the launch of this system.

Volvo plans to apply self-driving technology to its products. The feature will allow the car to completely take over the driving task in some limited situations. That technology will be put in an all-electric SUV that Volvo will announce later this year.

Volvo plans to offer the self-driving feature as a subscription upgrade to customers once the vehicle has hit the road. Alexander Petrofski, vice president of strategy and business ownership at Volvo, said during a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show that the car will go on sale in 2023, but Volvo has not set a date when the Ride Pilot will be available.

In contrast, Volvo says the Ride Pilot will not be activated for customers until it has undergone a "strict verification and testing protocol."

Volvo has said it wants to start testing the Ride Pilot later on pre-production vehicles this year in California, pending regulatory approval. But when production vehicles go into service next year, they will be standard with simpler driver safety technologies that will help collect data to validate Ride Pilot technology before it is released.

"I imagine we will direct some of our sales to California to get vehicle density to help collect data," Petrofski said, as quoted by Reuters.

Volvo declined to say how much the subscription costs to upgrade to Ride Pilot. However, this feature is said to be able to support Volvo. "We believe most of our future revenue will come from software sales," Petrofski said.

Luminar itself will provide what is known as a lidar sensor, a key part of the system that helps cars get three-dimensional road maps. But the vehicle will also rely on five radar sensors, eight cameras and sixteen ultrasonic sensors, all tied together with software from Swedish company Zensact.