Volvo’s “safest car ever” can wait. The replacement for the XC90, dubbed the EX90, won’t begin production until next year. The electric SUV had planned to launch its first copies on the road this year. The reason for this postponement is not related to the hardware, nor to an economic context, but to the software.
Like Volvo, many manufacturers have had to put a whole roadmap on stand-by to be able to wait for the teams in charge of the digital part to be able to offer something up to the challenge. Barely five years ago, they were far from investing as much in the computer heart of their car, and even more from putting it now at the center of all development.
The software challenge is not just because the task is brand new. In addition to wanting to develop it in-house, to defend their stranglehold on technology (and data), brands must combine a set of hardware from different companies. Volvo thus works with NVIDIA components, Luminar and elements of Google, with which it has signed a partnership for access to the services of the tech giant, including the Play Store application store.
Within the Volkswagen group, despite the growth in the number of electric cars sold, the software remains a real obstacle. It’s not just one model that’s affected. The ID3 had seen its beginnings particularly slowed down by software bugs, and now it is the Audi Q6 e-tron and Porsche Macan of the group which are two years behind. To top it off, Volkswagen had to part with the members of the board of directors of its subsidiary Cariad, in charge of software development for the group.
Mobileye, Google and Apple solutions
One of the most important deadlines that cannot be met is that of 2026, which provided for the arrival of Volkswagen 2.0 software. Postponed to 2028, it must be able to launch the new IT architecture suitable for the autonomous car within the group. Already, brands like Porsche have chosen to avoid this expectation and rely on specialized partners. This week, the brand indicated that it had signed with Mobileye, with technologies close to being able to be marketed.
Volvo, which operates in the Geely group, is also close to Mobileye. As well as Polestar which also belongs to the Chinese group. The brand entirely focused on electromobility will also have to wait for software development reasons. One of its competitors, Fisker, did not think enough and after years of trying to rise from the ashes, the brand took the plunge and quickly encountered problems with its software, reported the Bloomberg agency this week.
There will be no question of a small remote update, deployed in a few hours as big tech can do today. The sources interviewed by the agency spoke rather of several months needed. In the meantime, Google has just organized its I//O conference with many more advances for the automobile. Next month, Apple should drive the point home at WWDC.
This will not prevent Volkswagen from continuing to rush headlong, pretending to ignore the GAFAM, setting itself the goal of becoming the “world leader in software-driven mobility” by 2030.
