Volvo's Drive Me takes a detour

Volvo's Drive Me autonomous driving project is taking some detours compared with promises the automaker made when it announced the program.

Under the announcement earlier this week, Volvo would deliver 100 autonomous SUVs to real families in Sweden, where these participants would test Volvo's autonomous car technology. The cars would be able to run in fully "unsupervised" autonomous mode on certain, pre-approved and pre-mapped freeways in their respective communities. The original plans, first announced in 2015, stipulated that the participants would be able to test fully driverless, Level 4-ready cars, however, Volvo is now pushing this back to 2021. The families taking part in Drive Me will now be testing the cars with the same Level 2 semi-autonomous assistance systems that are available in Europe and the US. Eventually, the families will test vehicles with higher levels of automation, but in controlled environments such as a test track under supervision from Volvo safety experts.