Concept 26 is a car concept from automaker Volvo, a company founded in Sweden in 1915. Though its headquarters are in Gothenburg, Sweden, the new car concept was recently unveiled at its Motoring and Concept Center in Camarillo, California, USA.

Of course, a road-worthy incarnation of the model does not currently exist, as is it is a concept. And furthermore, Volvo has said that it cannot anticipate whether it will produce a car based entirely on this concept and featuring all of the technologies and functionalities it incorporates.

But it is confident that these technologies will be implemented separately in at least some of its future models.

So, what is the Volvo self driving car Concept 26? The number at the end is not the number of concept cars that Volvo has imagined so far. It stands for the average number of minutes that an American driver spends in commute.

And it hints at the philosophy behind the whole concept. Because Volvo’s opinion (similar to Tesla’s) is that a self-driving car should, for now, still have a wheel and look pretty much like the cars we have today, instead of a simple container with the interior designed to transport humans (like a subway wagon or the futuristic pods we see in movies).

Even more, Volvo thinks that self-driving should be an option, not the only mode of operation and their Concept 26 envisages a car that you can either drive normally (read manually) or can switch to self-driving mode whenever you like, by pressing down two buttons on either side of the wheel.

You can program routes for the autonomous mode and some time before you reach the end of the route, when the car will switch back to manual, you will get an alert and a timer on the console. If you don’t respond and the timer reaches zero, the car will safely slow down, pull over to the side of  the road and stop.

Despite the interior not being completely stripped, while in self-driving mode, you can still enjoy the comfort that people normally associate with imagined self-driving cars. Because the Volvo Concept 26 features seats made of two parts (bottom and upper), which recline all the way back if you want (but not while in manual mode), a console tablet between the driver and passenger seats and a table and flat screen that slide out from their hidden places (the table from the driver door, the screen from the passenger side of the board).

The tablet’s position automatically adjusts according to the chair’s position. And there are “modes” programmed into it, like “create” which allows you to send e-mails and work or “relax” which makes the screen come out so you can watch a movie etc.

Overall a very interesting hybrid proposal from Volvo for a manual and self-driving car in one, considering the competition it faces from Tesla, (allegedly) Apple and most importantly, Google.

Image source: 1.