Volvo’s cars will warn one another about hazards in the road

Volvo is updating three of its electric vehicles with new hazard alerts to warn drivers when there are animals or vulnerable road users ahead. The new connected safety features are based on Volvo’s cars talking to one another, as opposed to crowdsourced alert systems used by popular navigation tools like Google Maps and Waze.

The alerts work by using connected vehicle data from Volvo’s fleet of passenger vehicles in Europe, the US, and Canada. The car’s sensors and cameras are tuned to identify certain risks on the road. When one Volvo spots a hazard, it automatically logs the location and sends it to Volvo’s servers. Alerts are then sent to all other Volvo vehicles traveling along that same road. The alerts still depend on the car being connected to the cloud and the road existing in the map database, but Volvo’s newer EVs have plenty of computing power to handle the real-time processing requests.

Volvo said it’s updating its EVs with alerts for four types of hazards: large animals; vulnerable road users, like pedestrians or cyclists; roadwork; and accidents. The new alerts are coming to the Volvo EX90, ES90, and EX60. Volvo says it has 1 million vehicles on the road today with connected safety alert capabilities. And it shares its alert data with traffic management centers, as well as other vehicle brands, so its not just Volvo branded vehicles that are benefiting.

Volvo has used connected vehicle technology to power some of its hazard warnings since 2016. The Swedish company’s cloud-based system, developed in partnership with Ericsson, warns drivers of slippery roads ahead based on feedback from steering, braking, and acceleration sensors. It also notifies nearby vehicles when another car has activated its hazard lights indicating that another driver may be in a dangerous or unexpected position on the road.

In addition, Volvo said that the EX90 would be getting Spatial Audio support for Apple CarPlay users. This will allow drivers to “enjoy a multi-dimensional and immersive sound experience that places music and vocals around the cabin,” the company says.