Volvo, Luminar team up to deliver autonomous highway driving

Volvo, with help from U.S. technology company Luminar, plans to offer fully autonomous highway driving capability on models starting in 2022. That is when Volvo will debut the next generation of its scalable platform architecture, known as SPA2, led by the newest version of its XC90 flagship SUV.

SPA2 models, which will eventually include the next-generation XC60 SUV and V60 station wagon, will be “hardware-ready” for autonomous drive, the automaker said in a release Wednesday.

Volvo wants autonomous vehicles to make up one-third of its deliveries by 2025.

Customers who chose Volvo’s optional Highway Pilot get a package of technology that includes Zenuity's Z2 autonomous drive software, cameras, radars, backup systems for functions such as steering and braking and Luminar’s lidar system integrated into the roof.

Lidar systems are regarded as essential to making self-driving cars safe because they emit millions of pulses of laser light to accurately detect where objects are by scanning the environment in 3D, creating a temporary, real-time map without requiring Internet connectivity.

Although numerous future Volvos, particularly those with a full-electric powertrain such as the forthcoming third-generation XC90, will have the capability to drive themselves on the highway, the system will only be activated once it is verified to be safe, Volvo said.

“We need a legal framework in place so we can homologate the vehicle,” Volvo Chief Technology Officer Henrik Green told Automotive News Europe. “Secondly, we need to verify and validate the portions of highway where we can activate the function.”

A lack of clear guidelines for autonomous driving solutions caused Audi to give up on its nearly three-year effort to introduce its eyes-off autonomous driving technology in its A8 upper-premium sedan.

The feature, called Traffic Jam Pilot, was the most significant technological breakthrough added to the latest-generation A8 that debuted in 2017. Meanwhile, BMW Chief Financial Officer Nicolas Peter said Wednesday that the automaker still plans to offer eyes-off autonomous driving in the production version of the iNext in 2021.

Volvo’s CTO foresees a roll out of the Swedish automaker’s technology that will mirror how mobile phone services came online in the 1990s.

“There will be a map with a couple of important commuter highways in key cities where we will begin and it will grow from there,” he said.

While Volvo hasn’t named those cities, Green believes the automaker’s longtime commitment to safety will be an advantage when working with various governments to get approval to turn on Highway Pilot.

“We have a really good relationship not only with officials in Sweden but also in the U.S. with NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] and in many other countries,” he said.

Green confirmed that when the system is turned on Volvo will take liability for the car. “We are saying that the car is responsible when it's unsupervised,” he said. “The driver is not in the loop.”

He also explained why Volvo steered away from calling its solution Level 4 autonomy. At that level a car can drive itself but still has a steering wheel and pedals so that the driver can take control when needed.

“Using levels does not correctly clarify what we are aiming for. This will not be a self-driving system that can take your door to door or drive on any street in any traffic condition or weather condition,” he said. “We are surgically defining the scope in which this functionality will be safe and secure. Highways are the best place to start because for a massive number of our customers this system will provide a useful solution for a very annoying part of their commute.”

Another reason highways were chosen is because they are more controlled environments than, for instance, a city center with pedestrian crossings and other challenges.

Volvo said Wednesday that it was working with Luminar, in which it has a minority stake that it may expand, to see if it’s possible to make lidar systems standard in SPA2 models.

“We would like to expand this technology to as many cars as possible in the future,” Green said.Volvo will be Luminar’s first series-production customer. The Palo Alto, California-based company is also working with Audi, Toyota and nine other automakers, Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell told ANE. What Volvo will get is Luminar’s lidar sensing system and perception software.

In the past, a lidar system cost roughly $10,000. Russell said Luminar has been able to bring that down to $1,000 for autonomous driving applications and $500 for advanced driver assistance solutions built in volumes in the hundreds of thousands.

Like with most components, the per unit price goes down as the volume goes up. That being said, Luminar’s per unit cost to make the system is “in the three-figures,” Russell said.

He declined to provide the cost or volume figures Luminar negotiated with Volvo. 

Luminar’s system, which is called Iris, can detect human poses including individual limbs such as arms and legs at a range of up to 250 meters (820 feet), compared with an estimated 30 meters to 40 meters from some other lidar systems that are currently available. Russell added that the Iris system’s maximum detection range is up to 500 meters for large objects

“At 500 meters the system can see 15 seconds ahead and at 250 meters the system can see 7.5 seconds ahead compared with a second ahead for other systems,” Russell said, adding that those seconds a crucial when driving at high speeds on road such as Germany’s autobahn.

When asked whether autonomous driving systems have the same life-saving potential as seat belts and airbags, Russell said that they have the near-term potential to double or triple the safety of a vehicle and the long-term potential to make it nearly impossible for a car to crash because the system would actively take over to prevent the accident. “There is no reason why this can’t be achieved,” he said.

Luminar’s initial systems will be made on a pilot production line in Orlando, Florida, where the company’s 100-person advanced manufacturing team is based. That team is developing the processes to successfully produce Iris.

Those processes will be transferred to Luminar’s manufacturing and supply chain partners so that they can produce the system at higher volumes. Russell said four locations in North America are in the running to produce Iris and he expects to announce a winner within a couple of months.

Luminar plans to continue to outsource production if it is asked to expand output to locations in Europe and Asia.