With cameras and so-called Lidar technology, the Volvos of the future will know exactly how overweight their owners are or are not.
Body weight is probably a personal matter. Just not for Chinese Volvos. The car brand is working on a technology that weighs the person behind the wheel.
That's what the Daily Telegraph writes, as quoted by Bild .
The technology, which will first be used in the new and very problematic top model EX90, has been disguised by Volvo as a piece of 'safety equipment'.
Using a camera and several radar sensors in the car's interior, Volvos can currently monitor whether all people or animals in the car are still breathing regularly, or whether someone has been forgotten in a parked car.
It is the same technical principle that Volvo will use when it comes to monitoring the driver's weight. Volvo will use the information for e.g. to regulate the effect of the seat belt tensioner in the event of an accident.
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At Volvo itself, they think it is a smart solution. That's what the car brand's injury prevention expert Lotta Jakobsson says.
– The radar units are able to determine the size of people and their shape and thus assess their weight. This is important information for the adjustment of the car's safety systems, she says to the English media.
What neither Lotta Jakobsson nor the rest of the management at Chinese-owned Volvo Cars gets into is what else the car brand can use the information for.
As a Chinese company, Volvo must follow China's so-called 'safety law'. This means that Volvo must hand over data about its customers at the request of the Chinese state. For the same reason, a Swedish security expert warns against telling secrets in the brand's cars. Read more about it here .
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