As an XC40 Recharge owner I'm slowly realizing that Volvo/Geely really bet the farm on having a single system run the car and the IVI. There's no other explanation why an OTA upgrade to the system to improve silly little things like ETA in the map display suddenly made the OPD braking system fail. And the backup camera setup still isn't right.
Throwing a faster system at it is a band-aid. It's scary. My car is still on an old 2023 release of code and I'm keeping it there until it's sold. If the backup camera fails again, I'll use the glass window. At least that works.
My dealer invited me to see the EX90 "demo unit" a year and half ago. A demo unit that wasn't drivable and came with a Volvo employee admonishing us from touching any of the controls. Where do I wire my deposit?
The whole automotive industry is doing this to cut costs, and supposedly improve the driving experience.
I'll believe that when they ship a single car with a better UI than the pre-touchscreen vehicles I used to own. Until then, there's no way I'm getting any of these stupid software defined vehicles. We have one (Kia EV9), which is also a "dumpster fire in a train wreck", and are getting rid of it. We've had more issues than the people interviewed in the article about the Volvo. So have the other EV9 owners I've talked to.
The continual and repeated failures of OEM software are Conway's law in action. It's not that the developers are uniquely incapable of writing software. The constraints of the organization make good software a virtually impossible goal.
Moving to a new board based on the same hardware with dual SoCs might help a few bugs around the edges (though I have my doubts), but it doesn't address more fundamental causes. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid it's going to take another 2008-esque disaster for them to really "get" it.
Anybody who thinks “software defined vehicle” is a selling point has never managed software.
I don’t want my vehicle to function “because software”. I want it to function “despite software”.
So... an NVIDIA(?)-powered ADAS keeps trying to murder me.
Who do I call to get them to pull their boards from the market + flip that remote termination switch they agreed to when they signed on to the Seoul Declaration?
edit: Actually, I'm not sure who built said ADAS hardware. The question still stands for the Volvos in the article, assuming replacing the onboard computer doesn't fix the busted software.
Throwing a faster system at it is a band-aid. It's scary. My car is still on an old 2023 release of code and I'm keeping it there until it's sold. If the backup camera fails again, I'll use the glass window. At least that works.
My dealer invited me to see the EX90 "demo unit" a year and half ago. A demo unit that wasn't drivable and came with a Volvo employee admonishing us from touching any of the controls. Where do I wire my deposit?