Новая технология трехточечных ремней безопасности от Volvo может вернуть шведскому бренду лидерство в сегменте электромобилей

The real money in the automotive industry is in holding patents. Take Robert Kearns, for instance, who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and collected more than $30 million in settlements from Ford and Chrysler for its use. An automaker has to take the risk of pushing a product to market; a patent holder, ideally, only has to sit back and collect royalties. Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin, inventor of the three-point seatbelt, should have retired a billionaire, but he was too good for that, giving the patent away for the good of humanity. Crunch the numbers and you'll see what we mean. The Three-Point Seat Belt Was A Big Leap Forward To go over some key points in the timeline of the seatbelt, the feature was actually invented for use in aircraft in the mid-19th century by George Cayley, an English engineer who didn't want to fall out of his glider. Seatbelts would be mandatory in all aircraft by 1928 bu before Volvo could give away the most valuable patent in automotive history, the industry had to be convinced that seatbelts were worth having at all. Believe it or not, seatbelts didn't start to become commonplace in cars until the mid 20th century. Nash, the Kenosha-based automaker that would eventually become American Motors Corporation, offered seatbelts as a factory-installed option in 40,000 cars in 1949, but buyers didn't like them and even requested they be removed. Ford experienced a similar lack of success in the 1950s. Nils Bohlin Had The Patent That Could Have Made Him A Billionaire – He Gave It Away Sweden was always a trailblazer on the safety belt front. Before Nils Bohlin invented what would become the modern seatbelt, Saab was pushing seatbelts as standard equipment as early as 1958 and encouraged the rest of the industry to follow suit. Vattenfall, a Swedish national electric utility, ran a study that found the majority of workplace deaths occurred on the road. A pair of Vattenfall safety engineers, Bengt Odelgard and Per-Olof Wemen, got to work on designing seatbelts, eventually selling their patent to Volvo in the late 1950s. By 1959, Nils Bohlin would develop the final three-point system, running a study of his own to prove that it could prevent fatal injuries at speeds below 60 mph. Bohlin was granted US patent 3,043,625 for the invention, and he and Volvo could have raked in a fortune licensing the design, especially after seatbelts were federally mandated equipment by 1968. They chose instead to make it free for all to use – but what did that generosity actually cost them? The numbers are staggering. Conservative Estimates See Volvo Giving Up Billions For Highway Safety Just to make sure we're not inflating the numbers here, we'll assume Volvo would have charged a small fee of $10 per car, and we'll stick to US auto sales in the 20 years it would have taken for the initial patent to expire. These numbers are taken from a range of sources, including the New York Times and Cox Automotive. In 1962, there was a total of 6.7 million units, which climbed gradually,peaking in 1973 (14.6 million). The industry enjoyed its three best years from 1977–1979 when it averaged over 15 million units. Add all the sales from those initial 20 years up, and the total comes out to just under 244 million units. Multiply that by $10 a unit, and you're looking at $2.4 billion in potential earnings. The NHTSA Says Seatbelts Saved Over 329,000 Lives – Volvo Puts The Real Number At A Million Why did Volvo leave all that money on the table? Well, according to the NHTSA, seatbelts saved 329,715 lives in the US from 1960 to 2012 alone, which the Administration says is more than all other safety features combined. A study published on PubMed in 2017 argued that 50,000 lives had been saved in the UK since seatbelts became mandatory in 1983. Volvo's own estimates put the number at "over one million lives." An exact number is difficult to calculate, as we're talking largely in hypotheticals, and not all countries publish comparable statistics. The best estimate we have comes from the United Nations and the World Health Organization, which credit mandatory seatbelt laws and the three-point safety belt for millions of lives saved since the mid-20th century. Volvo Is Still Pushing Seatbelt Technology Forward Take a look at the latest IIHS Top Safety Pick awardee roundup, and you may be surprised to find that Volvo appears only three times. The Swedish automaker scored a Top Safety Pick+ award for the 2026 EX90 four-door, and a pair of Top Safety Picks for the 2026 Volvo XC90 and its plug-in variant. Volvo's IIHS numbers have been underwhelming for a while now. This might seem to suggest a brand that is no longer leading the industry in safety, but that impression couldn't be further from the truth. While Volvo might not be scooping up Insurance Institute safety awards by the armful, the brand is still pushing innovative, life-saving technology. Volvo's latest innovation, debuted in the all-electric 2027 EX60, is the multi-adaptive safety belt, the next stage in the evolution of the three-point design. The multi-adaptive seatbelt is the first of its kind, and, according to Volvo Cars Safety Center head Åsa Haglund, aims to "leverage real-time data with the ambition to save millions more lives". "This marks a major upgrade to the modern three-point safety belt, a Volvo invention introduced in 1959, and estimated to have saved over a million lives." – Åsa Haglund, head of Volvo Cars Safety Center The multi-adaptive seatbelt takes real-time data from the car's sensor system, using that information to adjust on the fly, accounting for the passenger's weight, height, body shape, and seating position. Multi-Adaptive Seatbelts Introduce A Safer Approach To Safety At present, seatbelts aren't perfect. If the belt snaps too tight in a minor accident, occupants can suffer concussions or rib fractures. A smart seatbelt that knows exactly how much force to apply, and where, while restraining occupants, looks to be a major step forward for the technology. There is no word yet on Volvo making this new technology open-source, but it is not hard to imagine other automakers following suit and developing their own competing technology. While Volvo is using its own proprietary hardware and software in the multi-adaptive safety belts, you can't exactly own the idea of what is essentially a more sophisticated seatbelt tensioner system. Safety-oriented brands like Subaru will no doubt take Volvo's new technology as a challenge. The EX60 Could Lead Volvo Into A Whole New Era We drove the EX60 earlier this year, and we liked what we saw. A two-row SUV starting at $58,400, rivaling BMW on luxury, offering up to 400 miles of range, and producing between 369 and 670 horsepower, the EX60 is certainly the most exciting new car Volvo has produced in years and could easily put the brand back on the map for many drivers. The multi-adaptive safety belts found in the EX60 have been more of a side note in the car's rollout than a headline story, but leading with its safety innovations couldn't hurt Volvo. New seatbelt tech might not be the most thrilling feature in a new vehicle, but safety is a major driver for car buyers, especially in the family vehicle segment. Volvo's new EV is still awaiting full crash test reports from the IIHS and the NHTSA, but it would be no surprise to see the EX60 put the brand back at the head of the pack where it belongs, starting the 2027 model year on a high note for the Swedish automaker. Sources: Volvo, NHTSA, United Nations, PubMed, New York Times.