Volvo Recognised as a Leader in Software-Defined cars
The S&P Global Mobility group has given Volvo Cars the highest ranking possible to carmakers for it’s software-defined capabilities.
Earlier this month we brought you a story that was a significant milestone for Volvo to achieve this praise as it updated 2.5 million Volvo Cars via an over-the-air software update, significantly changing and improving the user interface for their new and existing fleet.
You can find the details here as to which cars were included in the update.
Following on from this update, Volvo has been recognised as the only legacy manufacturer so far to have accomplished such a deep, and broad update.
Volvo Cars Superset tech stack
Volvo can now add safety features, enhance the user experience and even improve charging speeds and driver range by fettling with the coding that defines efficiency.
Håkan Samuelsson, CEO of Volvo Cars said “Years of focused engineering efforts and investments have given Volvo software capabilities that only a select few in the industry have achieved. This has enabled us to deliver a step change in customer experiences and development speed.”
Whilst Tesla set this standard back in 2012, it has taken an enormous effort from the legacy car industry to align itself this way as it requires significant foundational changes to how cars are built, which has an impact on supply chains, tooling and training.
Volvo EX60
Software-defined cars is transformational for the industry and soon the redundancy that was built into hardware-defined cars may now be in the past as more manufacturers are able to keep their fleet up-to-date with the latest tech by developing the software for it in-house.
In Volvo’s case, they have called this HuginCore, which is their proprietary in-house electrical architecture required for this type of development. This adds a much-needed element of vertical integration to an industry that has become more dependant on outsourced modules for new tech.
HuginCore has been applied to the EX90, ES90 and EX60 so far.
The other benefit that this approach brings is data acquisition. Other than using that data to further develop and enhance the vehicles, it will also be used for development in autonomy, which is very much reliant on real-world data gathering and less reliant on sensors, such a LiDAR which Volvo recently dropped.
For the customer, they just get a better car that keeps improving itself over time.
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About the Author
Graeme Cobb is a lifelong car enthusiast with a passion for writing about cars, EVs, industry updates and more.
You can find Graeme on 𝕏 at @graeme_cobb or YouTube @REV-EV.