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gothenburg, sweden: adios, uber drivers. cheerio, london cabbie. the robo-taxi, a selfdriving, autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel, no human driver and an interior looking more like a first-class train carriage, is coming. volvo, the swedish carmarker bankrolled by geely one of the powers in the chinese automotive industry, on wednesday unveiled its vision of the future: the volvo 360c. It offers you (probably via a subscription service rather than outright ownership) a car that can provide a television and breakfast table for your commute into work, or a vehi cle for onthe-go meetings and presentations, or a vip party vehicle on the way to your after-work event. In the words of hakan samuelsson, volvo's chief executive: "It is about spending hours in the car doing something other than just driving." The launch of the volvo 360c is the latest stage in the battle between traditional au tomotive manuafacturers and technology giants such as alphabet, the owner of google, in the embryonic market for autonomou and electric vehicles. volvo has worked up the 360c as its version of what that car should look like for the probable initial market for autonomous driving: ride-hailing providers. the carmaker is already working with uber, the newcomer that has shaken up the taxi industry, and a collaboration that is providing the sort of data that the pair think will make the driverless robotaxi a reality soon. however, it also has brought the first unwelcome milestone of the brave new world-in arizona, the first fatality at the hands of a driverless car was a volvo test vehicle
with an uber computer strapped on to it-illustrating one of the great fears of autonomous driving, that the vehicle won't stop and will hit pedestrians. the industry argues that autonomous cars will be equipped with radar and sensors to react better than a human driver. volvo is developing the 360c not only to identify objects that should not be on the road and to brake sharply when it spots them, but also technology to send visual and audio warnings at an errant pedestrian warning them that they're somewhere they shouldn't be.