Volvo Sees Fewest Self-Driving-Car Obstacles in U.S.

LONDON – Swedish automaker Volvo is betting on the U.S. to be the first nation to widely adopt fully autonomous vehicles thanks to its state-based regulatory system.

It points to the fact just three of the 50 states, California, Michigan and Florida, currently have any regulations pertaining to driverless cars, meaning the rest are free for automakers to test the technology in real-world driving conditions.

Volvo’s Anders Eugensson, director-governmental affairs, tells WardsAuto car companies need these conditions to ensure the technology is robust enough to meet the challenges faced in everyday motoring.

“For example, China is saying that before they allow road testing they have to drive (the vehicles) for six months on test tracks,” he says. “That is useless and adds nothing to their knowledge, because the challenges are nothing.

“Challenge comes when you are exposed to all the risks and you don’t know what they are going to be.”

Volvo is owned by Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely.

Eugensson also contends most of Europe is hampered by the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic 1968.

 “In the convention there is something called Regulation 79, which is a real obstacle at the moment for taking autonomous vehicles on the roads,” Eugensson says. “This really worries us. The regulators are a roadblock because they have trouble keeping up with developments.”

The regulation decrees that “an automatically commanded steering function is allowed only up to 6.2 mph (10 km/h), to cover parking maneuvers, and above that speed a car can only be involved in steering correction, such as lane assist.”

Knowledge Gaps Between Countries

Eugensson says this stands in the way of many European countries fully engaging in driverless technology.

“The regulators in Vienna on the working groups are people from different governments, each with a different perception of autonomous driving (and) sometimes with a lower knowledge of what autonomous driving is all about,” he says.

“Some will have no industries involving cars and have no reason to change or have any insight into the different questions that concern the automotive industry. So, from outside, it’s very easy to see that they may find some things more scary than others do.

“Whereas if you have more knowledge you can take other risks than you did at the beginning. That challenge is difficult for us.”

Only Spain and the U.K. have not ratified the convention and this goes a long way to explaining Volvo’s choice of London as its second Drive Me autonomous-driving project launching in 2017.

“We’ve also been very pleased with the support we’ve been getting from the U.K. government on connected cars and autonomous vehicles,” Eugensson says. “While the U.K. is a great market for us, one of the main reasons we’ve taken this project there is that the regulatory framework is much better than it is in many other parts of the (European Union), because we don’t have the Vienna Convention to deal with, which is frustrating and, we believe, is obsolete, outdated and needs to be replaced.”