Volvo Car Corporation to Develop Active Safety Systems at New Test Facility

SYDNEY – May 31, 2012: An entirely new test facility for active car safety is set to play an important role for Volvo Car Corporation's continued leadership in the field of safety.

Active safety is about technical solutions that help the driver avoid an accident or significantly reduce the consequences of an accident. Some of the most recent innovations from Volvo include Pedestrian Detection with full auto brake, City Safety, Driver Alert Control, Cross Traffic Alert and Road Sign Information – systems that will be available in the all-new Volvo V40, for example.

The new facility will be built and operated by a company called Active Safety Test Area AB (ASTA). Operating under the AstaZero brand name, ASTA will run the test facility which will be located beside Volvo Car Corporation's existing proving ground at Hällered in western Sweden. Volvo Car Corporation will be one of the users of the unique test environments that will be available.

"With the new facility we will have access to an excellent tool for the development of tomorrow's intelligent safety and driver support systems," says Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President, Research & Development at Volvo Car Corporation.

"Volvo Car Corporation is the automotive industry's leader in safety, and our engineers are developing next-generation technologies as another step towards our vision that nobody should be killed or suffer serious injuries in a new Volvo car by the year 2020."

At the new facility, both drivers and vehicles will be put to the test in a wide variety of traffic environments – busy city roads, highways, multi-lane motorways and crossroads. One crucial parameter is the interaction with other cars, pedestrians, cycles, mopeds, motorcycles, trucks and buses.

The various traffic situations that will be tested include monotonous highway driving with sudden obstacles appearing in the road, inner-city traffic that includes dummy vehicles and human dummies, and multi-lane motorways involving lots of vehicles. It will also be possible to subject long vehicle rigs to highly-demanding manoeuvres, so as to develop even more effective protection against rollover accidents, for example.

ASTA is owned by SP (the Technical Research Institute of Sweden) and the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The facility will become operational in 2014.