It seems like a typical stunt to highlight how great your new vehicle’s steering system is.
Just get any old rodent, put it in a hamster wheel attached to the steering, and get them to chase a carrot.
Say again?
Exactly. That’s what Volvo have gotten up to with Charlie, a hamster who has been “specially trained” to steer a truck. And they got the video cameras out too.
Charlie steers the 15-tonne Volvo FMX truck from the bottom of a closed off quarry in Spain to the top to demonstrate the new Volvo Dynamic Steering system, which Volvo says "is designed to take the strain out of turning the wheel for drivers".
While Charlie performs the steering, a human driver handles the other controls and, by way of a carrot, offers the hamster an incentive to run his legs off.
The truck doesn’t crash, but then they are clever with those cameras.