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Today the 2027 Volvo EX60 debuted, which marks the future blueprint of the Swedish automaker’s electric era. But with it comes a sigh of relief as the automaker’s executives all told The Drive that Volvo’s software issues have finally been worked out.
In a round table with media in Sweden on Wednesday, Volvo President and CEO Håkan Samuelsson told The Drive, “I think we are well ahead of the others, and good luck, the rest of you.” The man in charge of Volvo was speaking to other legacy automakers that aren’t startups like Tesla and Rivian.
Samuelsson said the new electric era is “is a huge change going from specifying things and buying it, and getting the product in more than 100 boxes into trying to build up this [in-house software stack].”
Getting to today wasn’t easy. “Yeah, looking into it, now retrospective, this was a tough process, but now we have a central computer system,” Samuelsson said. The executive continued, “it’s a big game changer because you can be much faster both in introducing new features and fixing problems. Instead of calling and begging somebody else to change. Now, we can… just code ourselves.”
Michael Fleiss, Volvo Chief Strategy and Product Officer, told The Drive during another media round table, “I mean, the EX90 is a software defined vehicle, which Ford, tried, and stopped. Volkswagen still trying, not achieved. And we have managed it.”
Fleiss elaborated, “It took us quite some time, but now we have software-defined vehicles. We are one of the few legacy OEMs who have that. Software quality problems, now that technology is put into SPA3, which we launch today, and it’s the second software-defined vehicle, which is fantastic.”
The entire executive team at Volvo is keenly aware of the teething issues experienced with the EX90.
“As you have all, seen and our customers have suffered under the EX90 quality issues we had in the past, which are solved now, since the last software update. So that was a painful development. That’s why, we have a two year delay of everything, so that’s why the EX60 is coming out now. And we are openly talking about these issues as our customers have experienced them,” Fleiss said.
Anders Bell, Chief Engineering and Technology Officer, told The Drive, “it’s been a very, very, very tough journey. Glad to say we made it through. Unfortunately, it spilled over too much on customers.”
“I don’t mind having a lot of hard work and late nights internally, but it should never spill over to our customers. But now, the vehicles, even the flagships, are stabilized,” Bell said.
If given the opportunity to do things again, Bell said, “we should’ve started earlier.” The entire task of building a software stack in-house for a software-defined vehicle is a “daunting task,” according to Bell.
Got a tip about an automaker’s internal battles to create something? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com
As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
