The seatbelt has been a car safety staple for decades, but Volvo is working on a new version that adapts to you.
A modern three-point seatbelt is a fact of life and something most of us don’t think about much on our daily drives, but it’s still a core component to safety in a crash. Now, more than six decades after Volvo first introduced the three-point belt, the company announced a new “multi-adaptive” version that it contends is a far smarter (and through updates, continuously safer) take on an invention that, per Volvo’s estimation, has saved more than a million lives since 1959.
Of course, that’s not to say that three-point seatbelt has gone all this time without any improvements. Now, though, Volvo’s multi-adaptive safety belt — set to debut with the fully electric EX60 crossover next year — uses sensors to detect a passenger’s seating position as well as their body shape, height and weight. From there, the seatbelt assembly can adjust itself accordingly to best protect the belted occupant in an accident.
Over time, Volvo contends this new seatbelt design will get even safer, as the automaker can push out over-the-air updates akin to other onboard systems. Those updates can bring in a greater range of variations for belt load settings, with larger passengers receiving a higher load to prevent the risk of head injury from being thrown forward. On the other end, smaller passengers can be subjected to a lower belt load to reduce the risk of rib fractures.
Volvo says this new multi-adaptive setup increases the available profiles of modern load-limiters in today’s safety belt designs from three to eleven. It also can use data from interior and exterior sensors to determine the most appropriate setting in “less than the blink of an eye”, according to the company’s official statement.
This technology is a co-development effort between Volvo and ZF Lifetec, the latter of which will produce the belts for the new 2026 EX60. From there, it’s likely the technology will expand into the rest of Volvo’s lineup, though unlike the company’s initial patent that it left open to other manufacturers free of royalties, it’s unclear whether it will do the same here. With today’s sky-high development costs it may not be too likely, but we’ll have to wait and see.
