Volvo Cars has appointed Ödgärd Andersson as the new chief executive of its autonomous drive (AD) software development company, Zenseact.
The appointment of Andersson, currently chief digital officer at Volvo Cars, will come into effect on November 1. Zenseact was recently formed as a new entity wholly owned by Volvo Cars, following the split-up of Volvo Cars’ joint venture company with Veoneer. Its role is to focus on the development of AD and active safety software and it currently employs around 600 people across offices in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Shanghai, China.
Before her role as chief digital officer, Andersson was responsible for software development at Volvo Cars, including autonomous drive. “Autonomous drive is the engineering challenge of the century and we’re facing it head-on,” said Andersson. “Joining Zenseact at this time is exciting as we accelerate development and gear up to deliver software that will allow the first cars to safely drive themselves in a few years.”
Zenseact’s first delivery will be technology for Volvo Cars’ next-generation modular scalable architecture, SPA 2, including the Highway Pilot, an unsupervised autonomous drive function for motorways.
Apart from the appointment of Ödgärd Andersson, Volvo Cars has also changed the composition of the board of directors for Zenseact. It has appointed Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars, as new chairman of the board. Both appointments underline the importance Volvo Cars places on the development of safe AD technology.