Volvo City Safety will be at NCAA Final Four this weekend in Detroit
Media Launch for XC60 – Jan. 19-30
We’re starting today near San Francisco, Sausalito area, to show U.S. media our XC60. We have four groups of about 30 journalists in each group, meeting with us to go over details about our newest Crossover. This starts with presentations by out lead safety guy Thomas Broberg and Global Project leader Lars Blenwal, both from Volvo Car Corporation in Sweden, along with U.S. project manager Mike Cottone and Volvo Monitoring and Concept Center (in California) Doug Frasher and our VP Marketing and Product John Maloney. Of course we have our colleagues from VCC in technical support to handle vehicle logistics and support staff from U.S. to keep us all on schedule. James Hope, in our PR group started working on this over a year ago. Huge undertaking. He’s much more organized than I, so we’re rather certain this will work perfectly.
Our day starts bright and early with a 6 a.m. wake up and 7 a.m. testing of City Safety system, then off to about 250 miles of driving. We head North out of Sausalito, along the coast, then back inland via Healdsburg and head South to our base. This kind of event gives media an opportunity to meet with our design/engineering/business team, basically to pick their brains about what we are doing with our XC60. In our daily business, we rarely have all those involved with a project, like XC60, at one place for one time. Thomas is working on future safety systems, Lars is starting to think about his next project, John is working on advertising/marketing magic. While our focus is XC60, media always manage to ask about our future and where we are going, what we’re building, what’s the next car.
If you have any questions about the XC60, send them over and I’ll corner those guys for you.
Here’s some photos of what happened on our first day:
Briefing meeting: James Hope, leading everyone through the agenda for next two days. Details, details, details.
All dressed up: Very early morning shot, around 6:30 a.m.
Inside the XC90 support vehicle. I like the aluminum metail plate treatment.
This XC90 support vehicle has more travel miles than most cars get in a lifetime. We use it in all our launches around the world.
Doug Frasher was the exterior designer for XC60. He started here at Volvo with the Environmental Concept Car (1992) and has been instrumental in how our cars look today.
At 7 a.m. getting lined up for City Safety testing.
James Hope (VCNA PR) and Thomas Broberg, Senior Safety Engineer (VCC), waiting for the sun to come up, looking out at San Francisco
XC60/XC90: One journalist wanted to see what the difference is between both cars. Rather interesting shot.
A Really Good Question
The other day, we were asked if we keep adding systems like Blind Spot, Driver Alert, Lane Departure, Collision Warning with Auto Braking, City Safety and, in the future, Pedestrian Safety, if we are taking control away from the driver. Well yes and no.
This question came up years ago when manufactures started adding ABS and anti-skid control to cars. Yes, it took the skill out of driving when certain parameters were exceeded. In a sense it took the fun from probably 1/10 of one percent of drivers. Regardless of how reports might state that ABS doesn’t work, and of course they have data to back up their opinion, I’d love to take anyone who disputes that claim out to the NJ Turnpike and panic stop in slippery conditions. ABS and anti-skid technology is for the masses. Some auto writers hate having that kind of ‘intrusive’ control. But my mother will love it if ever she needed it (she drives a nice white V50).
Do we have too many systems and do they impact your ability to enjoy driving? Let’s tackle ability to drive and what we do at Volvo to help you concentrate on driving. In 2001, our Safety Concept Car (later to become the C30) was a $10 million future laboratory for safety technology. One system created was Blind Spot Identification System (BLIS). For BLIS there were five driver inputs going on – at the same time: inside rear view mirror, outside rear view mirror, five leds in outside mirror housing (that light up in relation to approaching vehicle), audible tone (increased in pitch as a vehicle approached) and a TV monitor in the instrument panel showing vehicles approaching. Talk about information overload. After Human Machine Interface (HMI) studies, we ended up with one small amber led in line-of-sight to the outside mirror, a warning that does not require interpretation. Good HMI is all about making technology transparent.
The XC60 concept gave a glimpse of an ultimate instrument panel:
Do we really need to monitor all functions, all the time? Remember ‘Turbo Boost’ gauges? The excitement was gone after a few days. Does it need to be as stark as this? What functions do we need? Do we need some gauges just to monitor systems for our own assurance that all is well? When should they be important to me? All are good questions that we’re working on for future Volvos.
We add systems to help drivers make decisions and to assist when the driver is, for whatever reason, not able to react in a pre-determined manner. Think of this as if you have a back-up driver waiting to help. We want to give you the driver an unobstructed driving experience, to keep the fun in driving. Driving is like combat, 99 percent of the time is boredom punctuated by 1 percent of time of fear. Your car should help you make good informed decisions and help when help is needed. You know….the three-point seat belt was probably considered ‘high tech’ at first.
BTW
In Sweden to get your driver’s license you have to study, like really study. The whole process costs about $2,000 and your test isn’t just one parallel parking and lane changing etiquette test. Some of the world’s best rally drivers are Scandinavian. They know cars, love to drive for fun and they take driving seriously. Here’s what they have to go though for privilege of driving.
You have a great day. Drive safely.
Posted in City Safety | 2 Comments »All About City Safety
Ok, so like many of my male friends, we don’t want to give up control of anything to anyone, much less a car. I mean, why would I want some high tech device to stop my car…I’m not good enough? Well probably not. Last summer my wife and I were heading down to Washington, D.C., stuck in world famous I-95 traffic. I’m stopped waiting for some signs of life ahead. I looked over my shoulder at our dog and bumped into the guy in front. I looked up and saw that I was moving….too late. Honestly, wasn’t more than 4 mph. The only damage was to his car, where my license plate bolts scrapped his fender. That cost me $550. That wouldn’t have happened with City Safety.
In April this year I drove an XC60 with City Safety. After I-95, I think City Safety has my vote. When driving the XC60 with City Safety, I was surprised at how quickly and aggressively the system applies brakes, at speeds less than 9 mph it stop our XC60 completely. OK, if there’s ice, snow, rain or whatever makes a road surface slippery, the stopping distance will change. From 10-18 mph the system will reduce vehicle speed and help to reduce vehicle damage and injuries, especially whiplash. I borrowed this from an IIHS report: “Rear-end collisions are frequent, and neck injuries are the most common serious injuries reported in automobile crashes. They account for 2 million insurance claims each year costing at least $8.5 billion. Such injuries aren’t life-threatening, but they can be painful and debilitating.” Guess I helped contribute to that cost next go around.
City Safety works by calculating the distance to the forward vehicle and road speeds relative to each vehicle to determine if your near future life includes bumping into a stranger’s vehicle. Mounted up behind the windshield, near inside rear view mirror is a laser camera. Interesting – all these years we’ve built safety systems that are hidden, like energy absorbing systems, great brakes, collapsing steering columns, whiplash seat, stuff that’s just waiting to be used, but you’ll never see. With City Safety it’s right in sight; guess you could use it to impress the neighbors. Hey, no one has this but Volvo.
I asked the engineer who worked on this, why no red warring light, like a “heads up display?” “By the time you see the light, and we wait for you to apply brakes, you’ll have hit the car in front.” His logic, and he’s right, is the system works faster than you or I. Our Collision Warning System with Automatic Braking does have a nice red led ‘bar’ light to warn you, looks like someone’s brake light right in front – heads up display style, but then in most cases you do have time to react.
Guess we men just have to learn when to bow to something smarter than us. I like City Safety. Well, back to work. James, my counterpart out West is pestering me for help with the Detroit Auto Show, we have press days January 11-13 and public days start the 19th.
Posted in City Safety | 4 Comments »A car lowering insurance premiums?
April this year I took a small group of local automotive journalists to our Arizona Proving Grounds (APG) to show off safety systems we’re developing. One of my interesting responsibilities was showing/demonstrating to media how our safety systems work and giving them opportunities to meet with our top safety guys, like Thomas Broberg. Along with our auto writers were folks from a national insurance company. Bruno, our Regulations and Compliance guy, was there with a City Safety system. We used a pre-production XC60, what we call ‘try-out car’ no VIN number and fit/finish is not up to final production quality. We use try-outs to adjust assembly line parameters, teach workers how to build an XC60 and for final work with the vehicle out in places like APG.
Earlier than APG, our Regulations and Safety group from Sweden (Volvo Car Corporation – aka VCC) went down to England with the same objectives. Here’s some video:
Our hope is that they will see how City Safety works and lower insurance premiums on XC60s fitted with City Safety. (By the way, when we launch our XC60, March ’09, City Safety will be a standard feature.) After APG, our Reg. guys, Bruno and Adam demo’d City Safety at Insurance Institute for Highway Safety headquarters in Virginia with two other insurance companies and came back with very encouraging feedback. During the next few months, City Safety will also be shown during our XC60 From Sweden with Löv tour. I encourage you to check it out.
Posted in City Safety | 2,289 Comments »The Safest Car Ever Made?
Last month during our XC60 tour, one journalist, after seeing how the City Safety feature works, asked, “If Volvo makes the safest cars, is this the safest car ever?”
…Wow, a rather loaded question. Ok, without a doubt we can say this is the safest Volvo ever. City Safety pushes safety over the top on this one. Is the XC60 the safest car EVER made? Well, we would like to think so and we’d love to say that, too, but our legal guy would come running down the hall looking for me if I did.
Maybe some safety history is in order. Since 1927 our charge has been to build cars that help protect people. Around 1972 we started collecting data from accidents that involved at least one Volvo, within a one-hour drive of our Gothenburg, Sweden headquarters. We would send out an engineer and medical person to record the accident. Today we have about 40,000 recorded accidents in our Swedish database. We use that resource to engineer new safety systems and to evaluate existing systems.
At Volvo, safety isn’t added on, it’s built in. One time we had a TV reporter interview our lead safety guy. The reporter asked, “How do you do safety?” Christer (our engineer) kept trying to explain systems and testing. He just couldn’t understand what the reporter was asking. For him, safety is not an after thought; it’s just part of his daily Volvo life. I’ve met lots of engineers who are like that. Safety is in their soul.
Guess that’s the long answer to, “How safe is the XC60?” With more than 80 years of safety engineering behind it, legions of dedicated engineers, thousands of real world safety analyses and a world’s first with City Safety….well, you be the judge. Suffice it to say that all of us here at Volvo are very proud of the XC60′s safety heritage.
Check out Motherproof.com’s video on City Safety at the L.A. Auto Show.
Posted in City Safety | 1 Comment »
