The Swedish Transport Agency recently granted the Swedish auto giant permission to begin real-world testing of its self-driving cars, boosting the company’s chances of meeting its stated goal of bringing the technology to market by 2021.

The self-driving cars will be allowed on motorways and streets in the Gothenburg area. The cars will not be allowed to exceed 60 kilometres per hour when the self-driving features are activated and drivers are required to keep at least one hand on the wheel at all times. Operators of the autonomous vehicles must also undergo training provided by Volvo.

Earlier this month, the Swedish company unveiled the futuristic concept car Volvo 360c, a fully autonomous, electric vehicle with no steering wheel that has been described as “a bedroom on wheels”, by a recent article on Verge.

The company will explore how autonomous vehicles can be used to shuttle people between cities, allowing them more time for rest, work and play instead of the hassle of flying. Air travel routes of around 300 kilometers (186 miles) are “prime candidates for disruption,” the company said. Such routes actually become more time-consuming by air than by car once you factor in travelling to and from the airport, going through security and boarding procedures. So, it would make sense to travel in a self-driven car that allows you to enjoy work and play, with premium comfort so that you wake up refreshed at your destination.

“The business will change in the coming years and Volvo should lead that change of our industry,” company president and CEO Håkan Samuelsson said in a press release announcing the 360c. “Autonomous drive will allow us to take the big next step in safety but also open up exciting new business models and allow consumers to spend time in the car doing what they want to do.”

Volvo concludes that the 360c is a mere starter for a conversation about the doors that autonomous driving might open up in the future. The company intends to advance that conversation as technology and infrastructure continue to evolve.

While this is definitely a great conversation starter, we can’t be sure if autonomous cars can actually completely replace flights. Moreover, with the advent of hyperloop and flying cars, the competition is quite tough. What would you choose?

The post Can Volvo’s self-driving cars really disrupt short-haul aviation? appeared first on TravHQ.

Auto companies are more open than ever to look beyond what they are doing and explore what they see as the future of transportation. However, in order to move quickly, they are looking outside for allies to build on the strengths of each other. Taking another step in the same direction, Volvo is making progress with the partnership with Autoliv called Zenuity announced earlier. Building on Nvidia’s PX in-car AI computing platform, they plan a commercial rollout of cars with Level 4 autonomy by 2021.

Autoliv is a leading automotive safety company while Nvidia has been aggressively moving ahead in this space. Previously the company announced partnership with Baidu to work on development of autonomous vehicles. Nvidia’s Drive PX already powers autonomous vehicles on testing currently.

This partnership highlights how large corporations are more open to collaborations and the trend will continue in the time to come. While the software they are developing will be unique to Volvo in ways, Autoliv will have right to make the software available to other automakers through its existing relationships. Nvidia too will gain from this partnership as adoption by other automakers will give its PX platform a push across a wider range of vehicles.

“This cooperation with NVIDIA places Volvo Cars, Autoliv and Zenuity at the forefront of the fast moving market to develop next generation autonomous driving capabilities and will speed up the development of Volvo’s own commercially available autonomous drive cars,” said Hakan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars.

Jan Carlson, chief executive of Autoliv, said: “With NVIDIA, we now have full access to the leading AI computing platform for autonomous driving. Autoliv, Volvo Cars and NVIDIA share the same vision for safe, autonomous driving. This cooperation will further advance our leading ADAS and autonomous driving offerings to the market.”

To work towards safer autonomous vehicles, Nvidia also signed up ZF and Hella to build additional safety standards into its autonomous vehicle program. In another development, Nvidia also announced partnership with VW to leverage AI in variety of mobility services beyond autonomous vehicles. Together, they are also looking to support startups in the space with VW Data Lab.

The post Volvo, Autoliv and Nvidia partner to sell self-driving cars by 2021 appeared first on TravHQ.

Uber will be testing its self-driving cabs in real world starting this month in Pittsburgh by assigning the semi-autonomous vehicles to Uber users randomly. The fleet will consist of modified Volvo XC90 SUVs. Each car will be supervised by a human in the driver’s seat ready to take control when required and a co-drive taking notes. Uber hasn’t revealed how many of these cars will be running around.

Volvo Cars and Uber join forces to develop autonomous driving cars

Uber is joining forces with the right teams to maximise the outcome of its efforts towards a driverless future. The company announced yesterday that it will be working with Volvo to develop autonomous vehicles. The two companies will be investing a combined of USD 300 million towards this project. The primary objective of the push towards a driverless future is to make roads safer. Volvo has always been known to make some of the safest vehicles on the road today with the help of various active and passive safety features. The base vehicles will be manufactured by Volvo Cars and then purchased for use by Uber. Uber will add its own self-developed autonomous driving systems to the vehicle and Volvo will use the same base vehicle for its own autonomous car strategy. It is a win-win situation for both the companies. Uber will need decades to come anywhere close to what Volvo is capable of right now when it comes to making cars. On the other side, Uber is very strong when it comes to technology and has the right kind of talent to help Volvo eliminate the role of driver. Uber also has the intelligence that comes from its fleet doing combined 1.2 billion miles per month.

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said: “Over 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.”

Along with this, Uber also announced the acquisition of Otto, a startup that has been working on technologies to make trucks autonomous. With this acquisition, Anthony Levandowski, co-founder of Otto will lead their combined self-driving efforts across personal transport, delivery and long distance trucking in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Pittsburgh.

Lyft has also been quick to make moves in this space with GM. While everyone is talking about the possibilities for brands like Uber with autonomous vehicles, they could also pose a threat to the entire business of Uber. He even highlighted this in a recent interview with Business Insider. Autonomy will increase vehicle productivity and it won’t be long before we see many new businesses being built around it. Right now Uber has got its fleet of drivers and the advanced systems that work behind the scenes to get you a ride but if any brand is able to achieve affordable automation before Uber, Uber will have a major threat to deal with.

Kalanick highlighted the same in his interview and quoted, “If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the enemy that’s in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher quality than Uber’s, then Uber is no longer a thing.”

Is the aggressive push by Uber towards a driverless future justified? We think so. From how things appear right now, it is a situation where the winner takes all and nobody has the timelines. The future of ground transportation is certainly very interesting.

The post Uber bullish on driverless cars, acquires Otto and associates with Volvo to speed up developments appeared first on TravHQ.

February was an exciting month for us. We came back after three exciting days at SATTE 2016 and soon after, we hosted the first Startup Knockdown successfully in association with OTM Mumbai and are now looking forward to the next one in Mumbai. This month also saw some major investments in travel space. Like always, we also learned about some really interesting travel startups and shared them with you. In case you missed, here are our top stories from this month:

#1- Fxkart and Tramily emerge as winners at first Travel Startup Knockdown

In the first Travel Startup Knockdown, Fxkart was selected to be the winner by our panel of judges. Fxkart simplifies the process of foreign exchange for international travellers by connecting them to reliable forex dealers. Tramily was picked as people’s choice at Startup Knockdown. It is a platform that connects travel agents to hoteliers easily through a website or mobile app.

Full story

#2- ibibo group to receive USD 240 million funding from Naspers

ibibo, the parent company of popular OTA Goibibo will be receiving a funding of USD 250 million from existing stakeholder Naspers. The group not only operates the popular OTA but also runs B2B travel platform TravelBoutiqueOnline, bus booking service Redbus and budget hotel chain Gostays. The latest funds will be used by the company to develop new technologies to enhance the products.

Full story

#3- Zendrive raises USD 13.5 million to make car travel safer

Zendrive offers analytics on the driving patterns to offer a quality score. It doesn’t require any hardware and relies on the sensors in mobile phone of the driver to generate the data. Zendrive is available through SDK and can be embedded with various apps. The technology holds huge potential and the participation of major automobile companies in this round is a strong indicator of the same.

Full story

#4- Shouut is the only app you will need for local discovery

In a time when we have a separate app for everything from discovering activities to booking hotels, Shouut comes in as one app that has it all. It seamlessly stiches together food & drink, nightlife shopping, leisure & outdoor and travel & stay giving the user an app that has it all. Giant Tech Labs, the company behind this interesting product has recently raised seed funding of USD 500K to further develop the product.

Full story

#5- Softbank confirms the acquisition of ZO Rooms by OYO Rooms

Softbank finally put the rumours of the acquisition of ZO Rooms by OYO Rooms by confirming the same. Tiger Global backed ZO Rooms was the strongest competitor to OYO Rooms but was facing challenges after failing to raise subsequent rounds from its investors. The deal went through with ZO Rooms founders and investors getting 7 percent stakes in OYO Rooms.

Full story

#6- Phocuswright MD, Tony D’Astolfo talks about their first event in India

Phocuswright is coming to India for the very first time with the theme “The Asian Mojo: Millennials, Mobile, Money, Mania”. We spoke with Tony D’Astolfo, MD, Phocuswright to learn more about the highly anticipated event and the driving factors behind it.

Full story

#7- Volvo plans to redefine car rental industry with its keyless technology

The Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has showcased a new keyless technology that eliminates the need of carrying any kind of car keys and allows unlocking the car using mobile phone. The digital keys can be shared with other users so that the cars can spend more time on the road than sitting in a parking lot. They will be launching a pilot project next year with their rental company Sunfleet.

Full story

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The post February 2016 round-up: The best in travel and web appeared first on TravHQ.

It wasn’t long back when keyless locks started finding way into the hotel rooms. The travellers can bypass the front desk, head straight to their room and unlock using their Bluetooth enabled smartphone. There are multiple technology companies like Proxce that are innovating in this space. Now the Swedish car maker Volvo seems to have similar plans for the car rental industry. They have announced plans to become the first car manufacturer to offer cars without keys starting 2017. Instead of the key fobs, the cars will be unlocked by mobile phones using Bluetooth which can be shared with others as well. This could be a great news for the car rental industry.

While the self-drive car rental service is something fresh for the Indian market, it is a well-accepted concept all over the globe. The industry is driven not only by players like Avis and Hertz but also by the P2P lending industry. The car of an average owner sits around unused most of the times and people often rent out their cars to travellers to cover some costs of the car ownership. However, this requires the owner to meet the individual who is renting the car and hand over the keys. This could change with the keyless technology Volvo is bringing and allow the customers to benefit from new ways of sharing cars.

Henrik Green, a Volvo vice-president, said: “At Volvo, we are not interested in technology for the sake of technology. New technology has to make our customers’ lives easier and save them time. Mobility needs are evolving and so are our customers’ expectation to access cars in an uncomplicated way. Our innovative digital key technology has the potential to completely change how a Volvo can be accessed and shared. Instead of sitting idle in a parking lot the entire day, cars could be used more often and efficiently by whoever the owner wishes.”

If someone is travelling away for the weekend and wants to rent out his Volvo to a traveller arriving over the weekend, he can just leave the car in airport parking and share the digital keys with the traveller. This way, they owner won’t have to coordinate his plans with the individual renting the car and he won’t have to rely on any third party to take care of the keys in his absence. The traveller can use GPS to find the car and unlock using the digital key. In a way, the P2P lending industry stands to gain more with this new technology as compared to the car rental companies that are already using technologies to control the car locks using mobile app. Find below a short video by Volvo explaining the idea.

The idea of unlocking cars using mobile app isn’t exactly very new but most other manufacturers use it as a secondary access method. For owners who aren’t very comfortable with the idea of not having a key, Volvo will continue to offer physical keys. A pilot program will be conducted soon by Sunfleet, Volvo’s car rental company, at Gothenburg airport in Sweden. It will be interesting to see how the shared key technology can be used and we look forward to the same.

Also read: 5 car technologies for traveller of future

The post The Volvo keyless technology could be great news for P2P rental industry appeared first on TravHQ.