Next-Gen Electric Volvo Flagship To Feature Luminar Lidar As Standard Equipment

In May 2020, Volvo Cars announced that it had selected Luminar to supply lidar sensors for its next-generation XC90 that will debut in 2022. Now the automaker has confirmed that the automated driving system (ADS) hardware package featuring the Luminar sensor will be standard equipment on its new flagship. 

While Volvo has released few other details yet on the next XC90, it will be built on the second-generation of the company’s Scalable Product Architecture (SPA2) and be available in a  fully electric version. Volvo has previously announced that it aims to have 50% of its global sales be electric by 2025 and all battery powered by the end of the decade. 

It won’t be the first vehicle on the market with lidar, but it will likely be one of, if not the first to have it as standard. Mercedes-Benz, Lucid, BMW and Xpeng are all launching products this year and next with lidar at least as an option. Volvo is following the pattern set by Tesla when it launched it’s second-generation Autopilot in 2016 and including the full hardware suite as standard equipment on the XC90. 

While Volvo isn’t discussing other models at this time, Luminar CEO Austin Russell said “we can say this, we’re designed into the SPA2 platform, they (Volvo) think that this level of safety shouldn’t be optional.”

What may be a first for Volvo is offering a system that consumers can purchase with level 4 automated driving capability. The system was co-developed by Luminar and Volvo subsidiary Zenseact and will be available later on vehicles from other manufacturers including China’s SAIC. On the XC90 it will offer completely hands-off, eyes-off, brain-off operation on the highway. Unlike other level 2 or level 3 systems, it will not require any supervision from the drive while being used. Full details of the operational limits of the system or how transitions will be handled aren’t being revealed yet.

One big question that remains unanswered at this point is exactly where people will be able to use L4 capability on the XC90 since the regulatory landscape is still very much undefined. However, Volvo is the only automaker so far to publicly state that when its vehicles are being used in highly automated mode, it will take full liability for anything that might go wrong with the system. Tesla has not done that with its self-proclaimed full self-driving and says drivers remain responsible for the operation of the vehicle.

The fully automated highway driving software won’t be standard at first, it will be an extra cost upgrade delivered by over-the-air update. Something like a level 2 system similar to GM Super Cruise but more capable than Volvo’s current Pilot Assist will likely be the standard offering. 

Since the full sensor suite including the Luminar Iris, radar and cameras as well as a driving computer powered by an Nvidia Orin processor are designed into the SPA2 platform, follow-on models in the 90 and 60 series will likely include this hardware as well. According to Russell, one of the goals in developing the Sentinel system with Zenseact was a focus on proactive safety. The combination of the more capable sensors including the lidar allows even lower level driver assistance systems to have increased situational awareness at longer distances. 

Unlike Tesla Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” which now rely exclusively on cameras, the Sentinel system features redundancy and diversity with at least three types of sensors – cameras, radar and lidar. This will help to enable fail operational capability during L4 mode if a failure of any one sensor type occurs. In this case, the vehicle will still be able to drive itself to a safe stop, something that may be more difficult or impossible with only one sensor type.

The Iris lidar is able to detect objects with 10% reflectivity at 250m which works out to about 8 seconds at 70 mph highway speeds. Longer detection ranges and higher resolutions combined with more sophisticated software running on a chip like the Orin allow the systems to make decisions earlier and potentially intervene before crashes happen. Current camera-based automatic emergency braking systems can typically only stop the vehicle in time at speeds up to about 25 mph. 

Another benefit of having the full sensor suite being installed as standard equipment is easier production planning for Luminar and other suppliers since they don’t have to project what the customer take rate will be for an option. Over the past five years, Volvo has averaged about 70,000 XC90 sales annually around the world. If they maintain that sales pace with the new model, that will probably make the Luminar Iris the best selling lidar in the automotive market at least for a while. 

The Iris sensor itself is relatively compact and easy to package compared to the rotating lidar sensors more commonly seen on automated vehicle prototypes. It’s about 320 mm wide and 54 mm tall. The rendering released last year by Volvo shows it mounted at the top of the windshield in a relatively sleek housing and Luminar has recently been showing a similar installation on a Toyota Rav4.