If the 3Birds Template team had to pick two qualities that make a Volvo a Volvo, we would say "safety" and "cutting-edge technology." After all, Volvo is the company behind the three-point safety belt and the Vision 2020 promise, that no one will die or be seriously injured in a new Volvo vehicle by the year 2020. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that Volvo has recently announced a partnership with Uber to develop new vehicles that will incorporate the latest autonomous driving (AD) features.

As Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said:

[O]ver one million people die in car accidents every year. These are tragedies that self-driving technology can help solve, but we can’t do this alone. That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is so important. Volvo is a leader in vehicle development and best-in-class when it comes to safety. By combining the capabilities of Uber and Volvo we will get to the future faster, together.

Both companies have contributed a combined $300 million towards the project, which involves developing new base vehicles (ones that take advantage of Volvo's fully modular Scalable Product Architecture). Once those new base vehicles have been created, Uber will purchase them and add its own self-developed autonomous driving technologies to the vehicle, while Volvo will use the same vehicles in the next stage of its AD strategy.

The entire project is incredibly exciting, both from a technological and a safety standpoint. In terms of technology, having both Uber and Volvo working on AD vehicles allows for both to borrow from the other's expertise, allowing them to combine the former's Silicon Valley smarts with the latter's breadth of automotive knowledge.

In terms of safety, autonomous vehicles (even semiautonomous ones) are the next step in making roads safer for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians alike. Autonomous driving can not only reduce the severity of accidents, (or avoid them altogether), it can reduce the stresses of traffic and even eliminate it in some cases.

The team at 3Birds Template is very excited to see what this partnership between Volvo and Uber will bring to the roads of the world. To learn more about Volvo's other technological marvels (or to test-drive one of them for yourself), feel free to call, contact us online, or visit us in person at 505 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516 today.

Image: Volvo