And you thought your latest weekend track race was adrenaline-filled... Enter the realm of Jonny Reid, one of New Zealand's top racing drivers. The 27-year-old Kiwi put a brand new 2011 Volvo S60 to the test around Hampton Downs raceway in Auckland. Nothing spectacular there you say? How about if we told you that he did it blindfolded? Yes, that's right; the young racing driver couldn't see a thing.
According to the promo event's organizers, it took Reid more than one try but in the end, he managed to return a lap time of 1:28 with a top speed of 193km/h (119 mph). "He was guided only by the feel of the car, his knowledge of the track, and co-driver Earl Bamber's voice," said Volvo. Pretty neat, though we're not sure who was the bravest of the two; the driver or the co-driver... Scroll down to watch the clips.
On Monday, Volvo announced that it has teamed up with Swedish energy giant Vattenfall to introduce plug-in hybrid models to the market in 2012. But before we see the final production cars arriving in showrooms, Volvo will present a trio of V70 diesel plug-in hybrid demonstrator cars this summer to test the new technology. Click through to watch the video that includes interviews with several Volvo officials as well as footage of the demo V70 plug-in hybrid in action.
In about a year's time, Swedish automaker Volvo will perform the market launch of the all new S60 premium sedan that will be heavily based on the stylish S60 Concept that made its global debut at the Detroit Show this past January. We've already seen static footage of the four-door coupe design study but now Sweden's Teknikens Varld magazine took the one-off concept car for a quick spin. Unfortunately, Google has yet to find a way to automatically translate audio from videos, so unless you happen to hook up with a bilingual Swedish gal, you're better off lowering the volume in order to enjoy to the ride.
This is officially the second safety system demonstration in as many "Look at this!" announcements that has gone horribly wrong for Volvo. That's right, two. The first one was back in May and led to a new S60 estate crushing itself into the back of a truck - see the video here. This latest mishap occurred during a media demonstration to Australian journalists in Europe.
Now that the known-as-safe Volvo brand is officially owned by the Chinese, is this a sign of things to come?
The mechanism in question is part of Volvo's pedestrian avoidance technology, which makes use of cameras and radar in the nose of the vehicle to control the brakes and stability control system in order to reduce driver/pedestrian injuries. The object that the system was meant to detect was Bob the Dummy; as you can see in the vids below, it didn't detect a damn thing.
That's not to say the system is terrible; after all is said and done, it worked 75% of the time. Of the twelve runs, only one ended with Bob getting the full force of the Volvo unleashed on him, with the other two still being less than perfect. Some of the blame has been placed on a camera that doesn't work well in low-light conditions (infrared / night vision, guys?).
Volvo's Jonas Tisell, Active Safety Systems manager, told journalists, "The failure of the test was due to the dummy not being set up properly, therefore it did not give an echo enough for the system. So the dummy was not relevant in this situation." So...blame it on the dummy? And "not relevant"? How does being to blame (according to Volvo) translate as irrelevant?
More like Volvo just got caught with its pants down...again.
