It’s not just Google who are looking to have us all driving around in self-driving cars – Volvo is also gearing up for production and release of their own fleet of self-driving vehicles.

We’ve spoken about the self-driving future of getting around here before, but we didn’t think that this would all be happening so quickly.

Now, Volvo – long been hailed as manufacturing some of the safest cars on the road – aims to keep this reputation by eliminating one of the biggest dangers on the road – the drivers themselves.

Volvo is planning to release its first self-driving cars in 2014. Speed won’t exactly be the main draw card – these vehicles will only be able to go at about 50km/h. But still, that is better than nothing, as they say.

By 2020, Volvo hopes to have a full fleet of self-driving cars. They’re also the only vehicle manufacturer that is part of the SARTRE project – the EU’s Safe Road Trains for the Environment initiative that “aims to develop strategies and technologies to allow vehicle platoons to operate on normal public highways with significant environmental, safety and comfort benefits.”

Says Engadget:

The main technology underpinning Volvo’s autonomous automobiles is wireless Internet, which would enable each car to be assigned a certain point on the road and give different vehicles the ability to interact with each other.

Of course, wireless Internet is a bit of a problem here in South Africa, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up that these vehicles will be available here anytime soon.

Can you imagine randomly losing signal coming down Sir Lowry’s Pass on your way home on a wet and windy Cape Town winter’s Sunday evening? Not ideal.

[Source: Engadget]