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Volvo to finally replace XC90 in 2014

There's not a whole lot of life left in the current Volvo XC90, but it seems a replacement is on the way. According to What Car?, Volvo will launch its new flagship crossover sometime in 2014, riding on an all new platform that will eventually underpin several models in the company's range.
According to Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson, this new architecture will eventually underpin the next-generation S60, V70, S80 and XC60, all of which will be getting mid-cycle enhancements over the next year. In speaking to What Car?, Samuelsson said that Volvo would not try to follow the paths set by BMW and Mercedes-Benz, instead focusing on "safety, elegant design and user-friendly functionality" for its next round of new cars.
The new XC90 will remain a seven-passenger vehicle and will be powered by a range of four-cylinder engines. Volvo will soon be dropping the five- and six-cylinder powertrains from its lineup.

Jeremy Lin's new Volvo has him working out with the XC60

Jeremy Lin rose to prominence as a point guard for the New York Knicks in February of 2012 when he came out of nowhere to lead the team to a string of victories. Volvo was quick to notice and signed him as the company's US spokesperson that March. Since then, he has starred in several Volvo advertisements, and his latest ad shows just how he uses his Volvo XC60 to train for the court. The highlight is Lin shooting free throws out of the sunroof.
Since leaving the Knicks, Lin has lost some of the visibility and hype that attracted Volvo to him in the first place. Still, commercials must be made, so check out Lin's latest below.

Volvo demos autonomous self-parking car concept

A number of companies are developing autonomous vehicle technology - Google and Audi come to mind - but Volvo is applying its work in the area to a particular usage case: parking. The Swedish automaker has the technology up and running in a concept vehicle, which it says can be dropped off at the curb by its owner and left to its own devices to enter and navigate a car park, then find and park in an available parking spot. Volvo says the process can even be reversed when the owner is ready to go, with the car leaving the car park on its own to meet its key-holder again at the curb.
The vehicle first interacts with Vehicle 2 Infrastructure technology, which places transmitters in the road itself to inform the car (and driver) if the self-parking service is available. The driver then hops out, activates the Self Parking function on his or her smartphone and then leaves the car to do its work. The car uses sensors, all seemingly hidden from view (an advancement of its own in this field), to autonomously navigate the car park, which includes interacting and adjusting to other cars, people and objects.
The technology used here builds off of Volvo's other work in autonomous vehicle research, namely the Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) project in which the company managed to create a train of four cars autonomously following a lead truck at speeds up 56 miles per hour. Volvo says the first application of its autonomous research in a production vehicle will happen at the end of 2014 with some level of autonomous steering available in the next-generation XC90. See the system in action by watching the video below.