Thanks!

Building a brand should include the vision thing. If you have sensible and realistic goals, and you stick to them, you gain respect. Good companies command respect, and good brands do too.

Aiming for best safety is 100% complementary to the Volvo brand.

Is Volvo’s goal realistic? Remember folks, they are talking about an uncrashable car. Not about a car that can’t be smashed by a train, a truck, or a Hummer. The uncrashable car concept implies using electronics to severely limit a car’s speed in dangerous situations. To be effective, it would require monumental IT power and considerable development finesse. You can’t employ a clumsy system that people would override.

Building products is about setting priorities. By setting this priority, Volvo is saying they are spending scarce resources on safety — and not, for instance, on developing retro muscle cars. A wise decision, I say.

That is, unless Volvo dealerships adopt a driving sim that gauges their customers’ driving skill and predicts their chances of terrible vehicular death. Sure, many potential customers would be offended and walk right out of the showroom – but so what? If maximizing ’safety’ as a brand identity is important, there are customers you do NOT want.

One, it’s a worthwhile goal. Perfection is not attainable, but it is worth striving for.

Two, this IS their brand identity (Is RF on vacation? He should have noted this before me!).

Even if they can’t sell enough cars, they could make a mint on some of the ideas they might develop and they have the right people to do it. It is their expertise.

…then claim it’s “carbon neutral” for added yuppie appeal.

Volvo is stopped in the middle of a grade crossing when the train comes.

Volvo is rear ended while stopped at a red light.

Volvo driver tries to take a corner way too fast. Car runs off road because required lateral acceleration exceeds capabilities of tires.

rashakor,

Yes, real autopilot systems to fail. Here is an interesting recent example of how automation leads to complacency and unpreparedness when the automated systems fail.

And yes…. they would get a heckuva lot of sales from the press coverage.

Auto pilot!

Actually even those crash, look at the movie “I robot.”

Imagine the ads, though: two 2020 Volvos on a straight line track a mile apart, the obligatory helicopter shot, then the cars leave their starting marks with a screech. Shots of the speedos, shaking as the car accelerates, quickly climbing over 100 mph. Heli shots of them screaming toward each other Then the red lights on the dash start blinking frantically as the sensors detect the other car, activating the ABS, bringing them to a halt as the bumpers barely touch. Then the voiceover “Volvo. The safest car in the world.”

Humans are always part of the system. Even if a computer is in complete control of a car (or whatever), since humans wrote the progam and built the hardware, there is a possibility for (and there will be) errors (in this case, crashes-literally).

It sounds great, but will never happen.