Volvo: “We’re too humble”

Volvo, the brand that pioneered the three-point seatbelt in the late 1950s, is “too humble” when it comes to safety, according to the local boss.

Volvo might not be focused on bold safety targets like Vision 2020 – a goal announced by the Swedish brand over a decade ago, to ensure zero deaths and zero injuries in Volvo cars by the year 2020 – anymore, but the brand’s local MD says safety is and always has been a key focus for the manufacturer.

Speaking to media this week, Volvo Cars Australia managing director Stephen Connor pointed to how many lives have been saved by the company’s safety tech but revealed his frustrations around its modest approach.

“Because Vision 2020 was an aspiration, it’s still talked about, but we don’t talk about it as a defining moment in our time,” he said.

“We know there hasn’t been a serious accident or death in an XC90 – we know that as fact. So, we can quantify that.

“So, [Vision] 2020 is still talked about. We talk about it all the time; how our cars are saving lives, we talk about the seatbelt and the fact we gave that away because we wanted to make the world a safer place.”

After inventing the three-point seatbelt, Volvo left the patent open – a choice executives admit “wasn’t the most profitable decision as a company” – and is now claiming it’s resulted in more than a million lives saved.

But Volvo needs to be louder in its approach, says the local MD.

“I have to say, one thing I love and hate about Volvo in both sentences is that we’re humble; but we’re too humble sometimes,” Connor said.

“One thing we don't talk about – this is how humble we are back in Gothenburg – is that we’re the only manufacturer I know of that actually sends out a crash investigation team within Europe.

“So, we’re the only car company, if there’s a crash in an XC90, we send a team there to investigate and find out what was good, what worked and what didn’t work.

“Now, I may be wrong, but I don’t know any other manufacturer who does that, and we do that.

“Even today, we see a team of people to investigate what happened in a crash. Was it driver error, was it not?”

“We then bring those learnings back to our business to then grow.”

Asked about new technologies like Tesla’s latest full self-driving (supervised) system, Connor praised the American EV maker.

“We don't mind what Tesla does, really. For me personally, they are great pioneers in this country, they’ve done a great job of lifting the profile of electric cars.”

“But what they do is up to them; we will focus on what we do, and we always do that really, really well.”

According to a local company spokesperson, Volvo has now shifted to a new aim of “zero collisions”.

“With all the driver aids available to us, the new software-defined technology; it’s about eradicating or eliminating or removing collisions all together, the best we can, with all the radars and cameras and the like,” they said.

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