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 The company laid out its vision for China at an event in Beijing,
with Chief Executive Hakan Samuelsson telling Reuters the company is
targeting 10 percent year-on-year sales growth this year for the
market here.
The planned autonomous drive experiment will see local drivers test
the cars on public roads in everyday conditions, and will be
conducted in limited driving situations such as on express roads and
highways, company executives told Reuters.
"I think we need to build up (consumer) trust in the technology,"
Samuelsson said. "So you have to bring it out and demonstrate it."
The move is part of the Swedish company's efforts to take advantage
of the pledges central government policymakers in China, the world's
biggest auto market, have made to embrace futuristic technologies
such as self-driving cars.
Volvo, wholly owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co [GEELY.UL],
is currently scouting for a city that could provide the necessary
permissions, regulations and infrastructure to allow the experiment
to go ahead, the company said.
"It has to be a big city where there are lots of consumers...
wasting an hour a day in the cars (sitting in traffic)," Samuelsson
said. "That's I think realistically where this function can be sold
commercially."
The automaker did not say by when it hopes to conduct the tests nor
did it detail the costs of the experiment.
The self-driving cars that Volvo is envisioning will be like normal
cars that alert the driver when autopilot mode can be activated, on
freeways or in specific zones such as gated neighborhoods or
industrial parks, giving the driver the option to maintain or
relinquish control, Samuelsson said.
Driverless cars that are voice controlled without steering wheels
and can drive anywhere under any conditions will not become a
reality in the foreseeable future, he said.
SALES TARGET
By calling on cities in China to sign up to participate in the
program, Volvo wants to send a message to the Chinese government to
"step up to the plate" to make good its often "strident" pledges of
commitment to autonomous driving technology made in recent months, a
Volvo executive familiar with the planned experiment said ahead of
the event.
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The China experiment will be patterned after Volvo's own
similarly-set-up testing program in the Swedish city of Gothenburg
that aims to start deploying self-drive test cars next year.
"What we're doing is giving these cars to people and using real
people as our data set, so the information they generate will help
us implement the technology," said the executive who declined to be
named because he is not authorized to share details of the plans
before they are officially announced.
Besides Volvo, Tesla, Mercedes, Audi <VOWG_p.DE> and Alphabet Inc's
Google are among those developing self-driving vehicles.
Samuelsson told Reuters that the company aims to sell 200,000 units
in Asia Pacific by 2020, one quarter of its planned global sales,
with China accounting for the bulk. The automaker sold nearly 82,000
cars in China last year.
Growing sales in China has become key to Volvo's revitalization
strategy since Geely purchased the troubled Swedish automaker in
2010.
(Reporting By Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing; Editing by Muralikumar
Anantharaman)
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