Volvo Cars’ Connected Car Program Delivers Pioneering Vision of Safety and Convenience

   Volvo Cars presented the next step in the future of connected cars at the world’s largest mobile and technology exhibition, Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona (March 2-5).

   “Imagine a world where road status data collected by cars is shared with other road users and with local authorities through a connected car cloud such as the Volvo Cloud: a world where the benefits of anonymized data-sharing support convenience and life-saving services while helping to contribute to a better society. Volvo Cars is working on realising such a future scenario,” said Klas Bendrik, Vice President and Group CIO at Volvo Cars Group.

   Volvo Cars is currently investigating a whole range of connected car services that could be provided thanks to available in-car data and the Volvo Cloud. Smart cities could improve traffic flow management by optimizing traffic lights and speed limits and by offering re-routing suggestions based on real-time traffic jam alerts. Real-time warnings of dangerous weather and emergency road conditions or of emergency braking by other drivers could be provided. In the future, smart cities could even use connected street-lights to illuminate slippery road-sections in another colour when detected by a connected car to alert other road users to dangerous road conditions.

   Road Status technology has been developed over many years at Volvo Cars and is currently being piloted in Sweden and Norway with a fleet that will extend to 1,000 cars

   “If a Volvo car detects that it is slippery on a certain stretch of road, for example, it can make other connected cars aware of this via the Volvo Cloud so they are forewarned.

Such connected car services could deliver both personal and societal benefits by reducing the potential for accidents and lowering the cost of road maintenance by making winder road maintenance more efficient,” said Klas Bendrik, adding, “Car makers have the potential to deliver real benefits to society by democratizing anonymized car data. This is something that Volvo Cars feels very strongly about.”

   Such connected car services could deliver both personal and societal benefits by reducing the potential for accidents and lowering the cost of road maintenance by making winter road maintenance more efficient.

   It is another step forward on an exciting journey made possible by the evolution of the connected car in a connected society. In the future it will be possible to connect such innovative cloud-based technology with traffic management ecosystems in different countries in standardized forms and maximize the sharing of real-time traffic information data – not only with other cars but eventually with wider society.