Volvo is making bold claims about its new XC60 crossover. The small 4WD was touted as "the safest Volvo ever" as it was driven out to make its world debut at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show.
Volvo justifies this claim with a new active safety technology called City Safety, which is designed to avoid and mitigate the effects of frontal impacts at low speeds and comes as standard on the XC60. The system uses forward-looking radar sensor mounted in the rear-view mirror to determine the distance to the car ahead, as well as the XC60's speed relative to that car. As long as the host car is traveling at less than 30km/h and the difference in speed is less than 15km/h, the City Safety system will intervene in a two-stage process if it detects that a collision is imminent.
First, it pre-charges the brakes to make sudden braking by the driver more effective. If the system detects that an impact is likely it works to mitigate the impact by applying the brakes itself through hydraulic pump activation. At higher speeds, the system sounds a warning and flashes a light if it detects that an impact is imminent.
The XC60 also features some of Volvo's other recent safety-tech innovations, including blind-spot detection warning, lane-departure warning, and Driver Alert Control, which monitors the car's driving pattern and notifies the driver if he or she is driving in an erratic or uncontrolled manner. Other tech highlights include a welcome departure from Volvo's pop-up navigation systems in the form of an in-dash LCD screen. The all-wheel-drive XC60 will be available with a choice of a 213kW six-cylinder turbo or a five-cylinder diesel engine when it goes on sale in Europe later this year. Australian deliveries expected to commence early in 2009.
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