Volvo's Radar Cruise Control Means You Only Have To Steer
Auto Tech
You join us very early morning for something of an experiment.
You see, someone once told me, it's possible to drive for one side of London to the other only pressing the accelerated pedal once, which is why we got this Volvo S60.
It's equipped with a radar cruise control.
So in theory, if I follow our little [unk] as a based car, press the accelerator one time here in queue, we should be able to get to the north side of Tower Bridge without me actually having to do anything other than
steer.
In theory, it should work.
It all depends on the traffic and whether there any idiots on the road.
Let's see what we can do, up to 30 and go.
We are now following our C4.
I am understandably quite nervous.
Press that traffic lights.
Okay, now what's gonna happen here is you'll see on the speedo that [unk] so I was gonna have some
brackets around it and that means the cruise control is gonna sort of pulse.
So to get going again, I have to press the restart button and the car moves.
No feet on pedals, no nothing.
All I have to do is steer, really cool.
Now the driving cars come with a 1.6 liter, 115 brake horsepower turbo diesel engine.
In theory, these cars can do something like 18 miles to the gallon, which is just incredible considering their size.
Even though we're in a diesel car, it's got an engine [unk] for long gearing and max economy.
It's incredibly quiet and also, you got a manual mode if you find it being economical and sporty.
Lots of traffic here.
We're [unk] the ones with roundabouts and evil, evil roundabouts as any time of the day, just
hoping it doesn't stop bouncing of all the other cars and just goes the one in front.
You cannot override the system by just hammering the brake or the throttle and that's no big issue.
And this tends to be run about with people gets stupid like really stupid.
Don't you dare, but that's in front of me.
Oh, man.
That was scary.
See?
Round there, people get stupid.
Oh, man.
Off we go.
This is the one was straight.
This is past the south circular, which a rush hour and during the day and basically any time is in after 6 in the morning is awful.
Great fan, great fan.
Damn it.
Nothing I can do about that.
It's okay though.
We can follow him 30 miles an hour.
The thing is, this system works really well as long as people aren't stupid and the problem is, people are stupid.
Right.
Coming out on Tower Bridge, she's the end of our little journey, which is good.
It seems we hit the north side, real good
in that.
Right.
We're about to cross the line.
Really?
That's as far as I'm concern.
That's how it's done.
What a clever little system.
Yes, if idiot gets in your way and the unexpected happens, you do have to intervene.
But I'm kind of glad for that because this-- as a driving experience, this has been one of the least exciting if everyone's taken not because the Volvo is not an engaging car.
It's perfectly fine.
Just drive around town and all around.
But just--
this is an experience.
I was just wobbling the wheel a little bit.
Not great.
So what I'm going to do now?
So after these lights when we've officially left Tower Bridge, so I'm going to actually do some driving, the first time this morning.
