Volvo Cars has announced it will introduce its unsupervised autonomous driving feature Ride Pilot to customers in the state of California. Ride Pilot builds on Volvo’s existing advanced safety features and aims to free up more time for customers, making driving a Volvo more convenient and enjoyable.

Once it has been verified as safe for use on highways, Ride Pilot is planned to be available as an add-on subscription on the company’s forthcoming fully electric SUV which will be revealed later this year.

On its next generation of cars, Volvo Cars is setting a new standard for safety, with over-the-air software updates in combination with a state-of-the-art sensor set-up. The software is developed by autonomous driving (AD) software company Zenseact together with Volvo Cars’ in-house team of developers, and developers from Luminar, one of its technology partners. The sensor set-up consists of more than two dozen sensors, including Luminar’s cutting-edge Iris LiDAR sensor, which work hand in glove with the developed software.

Volvo is currently testing autonomous driving functionalities on roads in Sweden together with Zenseact, and collecting data across Europe and the US. By the middle of this year, the company intends to begin testing on roads in California, where the climate, traffic conditions and regulatory framework provide a favourable environment for the introduction of autonomous driving.

Volvo says by using Ride Pilot, drivers will be able to free up time while driving, and spend it on secondary activities like reading, writing, working or socialising. The feature can also help drivers arrive at their destination rested and recharged, by reducing the mental strain that may come with driving, especially in traffic jams or heavy traffic.