Autonomous driving is back in the headlines with Volvo announcing its partnership with a tech company to provide the Swedish firm with new safety features for its next generation of vehicles.

Volvo Cars has partnered with Luminar to provide the company’s first fully self-driving technology for motorways plus have the ability to introduce future active safety developments. 

Volvo Cars’ next generation SPA 2 modular vehicle architecture will be available as hardware-ready for autonomous drive from production start in 2022, with technology to create real time 3D maps of the roads.

The vehicles will have Luminar’s LiDAR system integrated into the roof. LiDAR is an acronym of ‘light detection and ranging’, describing systems that use a light beam in place of conventional microwave beams for atmospheric monitoring, tracking and detection functions.

The Luminar team spent five years engineering and manufacturing the major components of their system from the chip-level up; this included lasers, receivers, scanners and processing electronics.

Cars based on SPA 2 will be updated with software over the air and if customers decide to opt for it, the Highway Pilot feature that enables fully autonomous highway driving will be activated once it is verified to be safe for individual geographic locations and conditions.

“Autonomous drive has the potential to be one of the most lifesaving technologies in history, if introduced responsibly and safely,” said Henrik Green, chief technology officer at Volvo Cars.

“Providing our future cars with the vision they require to make safe decisions is an important step in that direction.” 

In addition to the Highway Pilot feature, Volvo Cars and Luminar are also exploring LiDAR’s role in improving future advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), with the potential for equipping all future SPA2-based cars with a LiDAR sensor as standard. 

The system will allow Level 3 autonomous driving in Volvos, but it is not without controversy.

Audi has abandoned plans to introduce its Level 3, eyes-off autonomous driving technology in its A8 flagship sedan, a senior executive told Automotive News Europe.

The issue with Traffic Jam Pilot was that when it was operating liability would automatically transfer liability in the event of an accident from the driver to the manufacturer.

If a customer didn’t service the vehicle correctly, Audi would still be liable, sources told Automotive News Europe.

Audi had expected the A8 would be the first production car to have the eyes-off conditional autonomy available to private customers.

This could see its German rivals launch Level 3 or higher systems in the new-generation Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan or BMW’s iNEXT crossover.