9:25 am, September 10, 2024
Volvo’s CEO Jim Rowan has told Car Dealer that the brand will not launch ‘unfinished’ cars ever again after complaints the new EX90 has been rolled out missing key technology.
The new electric SUV was unveiled to the press this month but the launch saw cars tested by journalists without key tech – including relatively simple things like Apple CarPlay
The £100k car also has a Lidar camera fitted that is collecting data but it isn’t plugged into the car’s system correctly, while smart charging capability is also not functioning yet.
In total, eight key tech features on the car will not be available to customers from launch and instead slowly introduced via over the air updates.
The EX90 has 5G connectivity and the brand can roll out software updates remotely to introduce new functions and turn on those that are currently missing.
Autocar said it was simply ‘not good enough’ for these features to be missing on a car at launch.
Giving the EX90 just 3.5 stars, editor Mark Tisshaw wrote: ‘The launch of the EX90 has been delayed by almost a year due to the complexity of getting the software right, and even that delay has not been enough to get it to a level you’d rightly expect of any new car launched in 2024, let alone one like the EX90.’
When asked whether it was the new normal for advanced cars like the EX90 to be launched with some of the promised technology missing, Rowan told Car Dealer: ‘I don’t think so.
‘We are the first guys who crossed the Rubicon towards this full software defined vehicle and core computer architecture.
‘A lot of really good competitors haven’t managed it. Why? It’s bloody hard. And so we never got everything into that first release that we wanted to get into it.’
The EX90 was first revealed at the end of 2022, yet it took nearly two years to get the first cars to customers. Rowan said he was keen to get cars on the road as soon as possible.
‘Obviously the car was already delayed,’ said the Volvo chief.
‘We wanted to get it into the hands of the customer and now it’s there.
‘Of course, for the first couple of months we’re going to be collecting a lot of data from that because the car is fully connected – and then we’ll upgrade.
‘Next time we do it, I would like to get it much more precise in terms of when we’re going to launch first and foremost.
‘But we started off a software stack here that we were building up. Now we’ve built it to here, the next time we can use all of this and just put this on so the next time we release our next architecture or the next evolution of that, we get the re-use.
‘And we should then be able to bring out all of those things at “job one” as we call it.’
Rowan said Volvo has been honest with EX90 customers, telling them what functionality they would and wouldn’t be getting at first.
The Volvo boss is confident that the first owners will accept that certain aspects are unfinished and will ‘look forward to the upgrades’.
He added: ‘I think there’s a tolerance level for first adopters that they’ll say, okay, I’m driving and – I’ve been driving it and it’s a great ride – and it will get continually better.
‘The reason I say that is because we took a lot of pre-orders on the EX90 and we never actually got a lot of erosion, and we delayed that car a long time.
‘It actually surprised me how few cancellations we got, so that tells me they’re buying into the brand and they just kept their XC90, or whatever they were driving at the moment, for a little bit longer and never cancelled their pre-orders on it.
‘That’s the only data point I really have on that, but it seems to be that they’ve bought into the brand, they like Volvo as a brand.
‘They’ve bought into the new tech, they want to have an electric car, they want to have a seven-seater, they wanted the latest tech and they can wait.’
Volvo dealers who spoke to Car Dealer off the record said they were disappointed the EX90 was being launched without some key technology.
‘It’s very hard to explain why the csr hasn’t got something as simple as CarPlay – it’s been available on our cars for years,’ said one retailer, who wished to remain anonymous.
‘Customers we’ve spoken to are very excited about the EX90 and it looks amazing, but it really should all be finished and working before it gets to our showrooms.’
Rowan confirmed that future new Volvos – which include an updated XC90, an all-electric ES90 saloon and an electric EX60 replacement for the current XC60 – will be more finished when they hit the market.
Additional reporting: James Baggott
