Volvo’s electric cars can now warn you about a deer around a blind corner

Volvo is adding alerts for large animals, vulnerable road users, roadworks and accidents ahead to its EX60, EX90 and ES90 electric cars through a software update. In Europe the feature draws on Data for Road Safety, a shared ecosystem that pools hazard reports from rival carmakers and eight national road authorities.

Volvo’s electric cars are learning to warn drivers about deer. A software update adds four hazard alerts to the EX60, EX90 and ES90, covering large animals, pedestrians and cyclists, roadworks, and accidents ahead.

The principle is that your car knows what another car has already seen. The alerts join Slippery Road Alert and Hazard Light Alert, which Volvo has been running since 2016.

That earlier system started at home. Volvo piloted it in Sweden and Norway, then took it across Europe in 2019, letting its cars warn each other about ice and breakdowns.

What sits underneath it in Europe is not a Volvo system. The alerts draw on Data for Road Safety, an ecosystem agreed by European transport ministers in Amsterdam in 2017, years before the Data Act turned vehicle data into a legal question.

Its membership is the interesting part. BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo pool hazard reports alongside HERE, TomTom, NIRA Dynamics and road authorities from eight EU member states.

The four alerts are not new categories either. A 2013 EU delegated regulation already set out the list, including “animal, people, obstacles or debris on the road,” which is where the deer lives.

Europe tends to legislate this sort of thing rather than wait for it. The same instinct produced the General Safety Regulation, which in July put a camera watching the driver in every new car sold in the bloc.

North America has no comparable arrangement. Volvo has not said what feeds the alerts there, which matters, because a hazard network is only as good as the number of cars reporting into it.

“Every time a Volvo car shares safety intelligence, it helps other drivers prepare earlier to avoid accidents and feel safer,” said Åsa Haglund, head of the Volvo Cars Safety Centre.

Volvo keeps trying things at home first. Its Safety Coach app, which grades your driving and offers the score to insurers, launched this month in Sweden and Norway before anywhere else.

So the deer is the headline and the plumbing is the story. A Swedish carmaker owned by Geely is exporting an arrangement that European ministers, rival manufacturers and eight national road agencies spent years assembling.