One institute's mission to bring Quebec-produced driverless cars to the market

Hugo Normand may be in the driver's seat, but his hands aren't on the steering wheel.

The project manager at the Innovative Vehicle Institute (IVI) is behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Golfequipped with enough technology to give the car partialautomation.

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IVI is a non-profit research centre thatworkswith different businesses and isaffiliated with CgepSaint-Jrme. Its mission is to research and refinetechnologyforthe transport industry.

For the past three years, they've been producing and testing automated off-road vehicles, such as farming and maintenance equipment.

But four months ago, they paired up with German car company Kopernicus Automotive to branch out to personal automated cars.

"Everybody talks about autonomous vehicles and that's the field of the future!" saidIVI'sgeneral managerFranoisAdam.

"It's the logical next step. I mean, we wanted to start with off-road stuff because there's less legislation to look into. After that, you want to go on roads."

Taking it for a spin

With Adam watching on the sidelines, Normand takesthe Golf out for a test run atTransport Canada's Motor Vehicle Test Centre in Blainville.

Right now, the car is equipped for level-two automation.

"The car can drive by itself, but you still need to be aware of what's going on," said Adam.

"You still need to be able to take control of the car at any moment."

Some Teslasalready have that option in their cars;that level of automation is legal on Quebec's roads.

"As it's something that will go on the streets, we need to do a lot of testing to make sure that everything is perfect before it's released," said Adam.

The end goal, though, is full automation.

'Extremely revolutionary'

Many in the car industry look forward to the day autonomous cars take to the streets, but they also noteit won't happen overnight.

"Fully autonomous cars which will be able to drive inside a city, be aware of pedestrians, cyclists, of any traffic like parked trucks that are delivering goods, it will take quite a few years before we get there," saidSimon-PierreRioux, the president of the Quebec Association of Electric Vehicles.

Still,Riouxthinks we'll get there and when we do, it will befor the better.

"We'll be using fewercars, it will decrease congestion on the roads, it will decrease greenhouse gas emissions," he said.