Autonomous cars are the future and there's no denying that, and this is one reason why car manufacturers are investing huge amounts into building this technology. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Tesla and BMW are already using elements of these technologies in their production cars and real world usage has proved their worth. Autonomous technologies have been growing in the market and now Volvo Cars is betting driverless vehicles will make up one-third of its deliveries by the middle of the next decade. This is the auto industry's most ambitious target yet for the new technology.
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The company said that half of its driverless cars will be available through its subscription service, creating links to more than 5 million consumers and generating new sources of revenue. It reiterated a target to match other luxury-auto makers' profit margins, saying sales growth will be propelled in part by demand from robo-taxi operators. "These initiatives will help transform Volvo from being purely a car company to being a direct consumer-services provider," Volvo Cars CEO, Hakan Samuelsson said in a statement.
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Having said that, driverless vehicles are still in an early phase of development and though there have been a few speed bumps already. The test programmes have witnessed a string of accidents which proved to be fatal and yet again the question of whether this technology is safe or requires stringent guidelines has come into the picture. Be that as it may, automakers are not shying away from introducing improved technology and the race to who does it first is on the cars. There are several auto makers who have been looking at robo-taxis but Volvo Cars is the first prominent global brand to set a target for deliveries.
