Volvo has attended the CES this year with a driver assist feature called Ride Pilot, which it claims is fully ready for road use as soon as the laws allow it.
Car parts vendor Luminar and software developer Zenseact assisted with the project, the former implementing a lidar-based vision system. On the whole, the system comprises 25 different sensors.
Road tests with regular car drivers will begin in California this summer. Volvo says the state has a mild climate, well-developed infrastructure and tech-friendly laws for the initiative. Later on, the scope of testing will expand.
The first car to try out this new self-driving system will be the Embla, a successor to the retiring XC90 model that has recently debuted in a prototype form. The production car should come out next year.