The Swedish luxury marque, Volvo is all set to inception the safety revolution in India by offering the radar-based safety technologies on its upcoming all-new sedan S90. Volvo is also working on enabling such safety system on the currently being sold model in the country, XC90 SUV.
The luxury carmaker has scheduled its flagship sedan, the new S90 in India for the festive season this year, while the pre-bookings for the car have been commenced. Once launched, the S90 will be the first car in the country to get radar-based safety features.
Globally the XC90 SUV come equipped with such safety kit as standard, but the frequency spectrums are reserved and regulated by the Department of Telecommunications in India, the government did not allow such frequencies for any civilian use due to the safety risk with them.
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However, in late 2015, this got changed when the Indian government de-licensed frequency bands in the range of 36-38 MHz, 433-434.79 MHz, 302-351 KHz and 76-77 GHz. The government released these frequency bands in an effort to increase the vehicle safety and connectivity.
After releasing these frequency bands and making them useable in the cars, the Deputy Director and Senior Technical Safety Advisor at Volvo Cars, Jan Ivarsson said, “It will be a big improvement in the Indian market as we get into several possibilities with the opening of frequencies.”
Tom Von Bonsdorff, Managing Director at Volvo Auto India said, “Our radar-based safety systems are offered as the standard kit in the XC90 but are disabled for the Indian market, as per government norms. The forward radar hardware is there in the new XC90 and these systems can be enabled via a software updated.”
The upcoming new sedan will be launched with a safety package which includes pedestrian and cyclist detection, automatic braking, lane keeping assist, blind spot information system, and adaptive cruise control.
Though, all these safety features had deactivated in XC90. But Volvo Auto India is in talks with the Indian government for the official clearance. Once the Volvo gets the green signal, it will allow the existing XC90 owners in the country to activate the safety system in their car by bringing it into the workshop for the software update.
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