Volvo will debut more than a new model when it reveals an electric SUV later this year. The new flagship will introduce three key items, starting with the vehicle itself. The other two are a new, unsupervised autonomous driving feature called Ride Pilot and a subscription service that enables the use of the self-driving technology. Also of note is that when it launches, Ride Pilot will first be available in California before being "gradually" rolled out to other markets and regions. Volvo plans to start testing Ride Pilot in California by the middle of this year because that's where, it says, "the climate, traffic conditions and regulatory framework provide a favorable environment for the introduction of autonomous driving."

For years, automakers have told a specific story about how self-driving cars would arrive in the world. They would be shared and electric, fleets of ride-hail vehicles shuttling passengers like fancy taxis. General Motors and Lyft signed an agreement to pull it off back in 2016; Ford promised its robotaxis would debut by last year; Daimler said it would work with Uber to deploy fleets of Mercedes-Benzes. The logic was financial: Autonomous vehicle technology would be so expensive to develop that carmakers wouldn't be able to offer it to most drivers at prices they could afford. This vision carried profound implications: If city dwellers could depend on fleets of shared robotaxis for long trips, they could abandon the personal car altogether.

Volvo will debut "Ride Pilot," its take on a Tesla-like autonomous driving feature, in California, the automaker announced on Wednesday during CES 2022. Once it's approved for use on highways, Volvo says it will offer Ride Pilot as a paid subscription add-on for a new electric SUV it plans to reveal later this year. It will later bring the feature to other markets globally. The company worked with Zenseact and LiDAR developer Luminar to create Ride Pilot, and it's currently testing the feature in Sweden. As you might guess from Luminar's involvement, Ride Pilot will utilize LiDAR technology, an approach that puts Volvo at odds with Tesla.