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Volvo Cars Facebook page posted a 10-second video ready to stump anyone playing "Name That Tune." The question that captions the vid is, "This could be the sound of your future ride. What do you think it's saying?" The clip itself is a single piano note backed by a few synth sounds, like something you'd hear on SiriusXM Chill, and a three-dimensional equalizer graphic. The outro text reads, "The sound of #360c." We have no idea what a 360c is nor what it's trying to tell us, but it sounds quite a bit more pleasant than most car noises today.
Peering into Volvo's past for clues, we find instances of the number 360. The automaker produced a 360 sedan from 1983 to 1989, a trunked version of the 340 hatch, powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder. Then from 2007 to 2011, Volvo Construction Equipment produced the EC 360 Crawler Excavator, which weighed 38.3 tons and could extend to about 40 feet.
Our best guess is that Volvo has neither of those in mind, because of two replies Volvo made to commenters trying to guess the correct answer. One commenter wrote that the sound was from a "Full electric car ready for driving." Volvo's response was "Volvo Cars Electric cars are exciting, but we're looking even further ahead in the future. What do you think will be the next big thing?" After that, another guess was, "Self driving?," to which Volvo answered, "Now hold that thought, a self-driving ... what?"
We know Volvo wants to get a self-driving car to market in the next few years, and have one-third of its sales be autonomous cars by 2025. However, the video suggests something at or beyond the horizon of integrated electric mobility, and self-driving, but not necessarily a car. This could be a long, highly conceptual game. If the tone just happens to come from an autonomous, flying excavator powered by "exotic rust," you heard it here first. And we call dibs.
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Peering into Volvo's past for clues, we find instances of the number 360. The automaker produced a 360 sedan from 1983 to 1989, a trunked version of the 340 hatch, powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder. Then from 2007 to 2011, Volvo Construction Equipment produced the EC 360 Crawler Excavator, which weighed 38.3 tons and could extend to about 40 feet.
Our best guess is that Volvo has neither of those in mind, because of two replies Volvo made to commenters trying to guess the correct answer. One commenter wrote that the sound was from a "Full electric car ready for driving." Volvo's response was "Volvo Cars Electric cars are exciting, but we're looking even further ahead in the future. What do you think will be the next big thing?" After that, another guess was, "Self driving?," to which Volvo answered, "Now hold that thought, a self-driving ... what?"
We know Volvo wants to get a self-driving car to market in the next few years, and have one-third of its sales be autonomous cars by 2025. However, the video suggests something at or beyond the horizon of integrated electric mobility, and self-driving, but not necessarily a car. This could be a long, highly conceptual game. If the tone just happens to come from an autonomous, flying excavator powered by "exotic rust," you heard it here first. And we call dibs.
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