Volvo customers to test autonomous cars on public roads

7192 Volvo Cars' Drive Me program is to give self-driving cars to up to 100 customers in Gothenburg as part of a real-life autonomous drive research program using real cars, in real traffic, during 2017. The project is set to expand to other cities around the world in the near future.

The Swedish car maker is a major member of the Drive Me project, a collaborative research program consisting of several organisations from public, private and academic fields.

Volvo believes that in the rush to deliver fully autonomous cars, many car makers are forgetting the most important ingredient: the people that will use them. Its approach is to define the technology based on the role of the driver – not the other way around.

The company aims to have its first fully autonomous car on the market by 2021.