Sleeker Lidar Moves Volvo Closer to Selling a Self-Driving Car

If any automaker has made its name synonymous with safety, it's Volvo. The Swedish outfit's marketing department deserves some credit there, for sure, but they've got good stuff to work with. Over the decades, Volvo has led the industry with three-point seatbelts, rear-facing child seats, blind-spot monitoring systems, and more. Now it's once again in the vanguard, announcing Wednesday that it will be the first automaker to use a lidar laser vision system to enable what it calls "fully autonomous highway driving" in its cars, starting in 2022. That news is the result of a deal with Luminar, the eight-year-old lidar company helmed by 25-year-old Austin Russell.