It’s not quite the injury-proof car that Volvo is aiming for by 2020, but we reckon this is as close as it’ll get. Volvo’s world first pedestrian detection and auto-brake technology uses radar and cameras to detect people in the way, and if you don’t brake in time, it’ll do it for you. We wanted to see how this worked for ourselves, and here are the results on video. More »
Legoland California’s General Manager Peter Ronchetti has a Volvo XC60. At least until a couple days ago someone decided to use a lift fork to switch it to a life-sized, 1330kg Lego XC90 made of 201,076 bricks. More »
What happens when a 300kg electric car battery hits an offset wall while travelling at 65 kph? Not much, to be honest with you. Still, things crashing—in slow motion! More »
Two things stand out about this photo that reader Jacob sent in: Firstly, that I never would have picked Obi-wan as a Volvo driver… He always seemed more a Mercedes kind of guy to me. Secondly, that the Jedi master is a lot more vain than the Star Wars films made him out to be, considering those vanity plates cost $430 a year to display on your car. And last I heard, Jedi don’t make that much moolah. The Sith, on the other hand…
[Thanks Jacob!] More »
Here’s the new Volvo in-house wind tunnel simulator, a 28 million dollar facility that is the first in its class to have a road simulator. In theory, it will allow the Swedish manufacturer to precisely test the effect of road changes and airflows all around the car to make cars more fuel efficient. Strangely enough, Tim Walker, the aerodynamics expert at Volvo Cars, doesn’t mention other possible uses, like drying the hair and bodies of a multitude of lusty valkyries and/or vikings just out of the shower:
Having been in the business of making incredibly safe vehicles for decades, Volvo is going one step further and making a “virtually” injury-proof car by the year 2020. “Virtually,” because it will ensure all occupents survive all but the craziest wrecks. Not only is Volvo making the car more resistant to crashes, but they’re putting stuff like radar and sonar in order to automatically force the car to brake when a collision is imminent, lowering death rates by half with just a 16 kph decrease in smash speed.
