Sweden’s roads are set to welcome self-driving cars after a joint venture involving Volvo Cars was given approval to begin hands-free testing of its vehicles on selected routes.
Zenuity, an autonomous driving technology company developed by Volvo, will partner with autonomous software developer Veoneer, to trial its Level 4 software inside a Volvo vehicle, which will allow operation without touching the wheel at speeds of up to 50mph (80km/h). The vehicles, however, will still have a trained driver behind the wheel.
Transportstyrelsen, the Swedish Transport Agency, approved the application from Zenuity for the public highway testing and has granted permission for the cars to drive on the E4 between Stockholm and Malmö, Road 40 between Jönköping and Gothenburg, and E6 between Gothenburg and Malmö.
“This approval takes us one step closer toward unsupervised cars on the roads in the future. It is also essential for collecting important data and improving our active safety functions in order to make it real,” said Dennis Nobelius, CEO at Zenuity.
