The Volvo EX90 is a disaster that has cost the company Billions, will ship with missing features

[kvenom]

-Carup can now reveal the major IT problems that have delayed Volvo's prestige project and that are costing billions. The top managers at Volvo wanted to surpass Tesla with "Core Computer" and lidar - even though no one at Volvo had experience with the technology. The result was perhaps the biggest development failure in Volvo's history. The project has had four different managers in five years and the software still lacks important functions.

- The management was warned many times that we had neither the competence nor the conditions to create a car with Tesla technology, but no one listened, says a person with unique insight into the project.

-We rewind the tape to 2019. It was then that Volvo had started in earnest to produce the successor to the successful Volvo XC90, a cash cow that is the company's most profitable and most important model. The plan was to release the model on the new SPA2 platform that was being developed. Volvo Cars' development management wanted to make a car that surpassed Tesla in computer technology. It would have unique Core Computing technology. More a computer on four wheels than a car, a technical masterpiece with a central computer that only Tesla had before. There was just one problem.

-At the time, there was no one at Volvo Cars who had either the skills or the conditions to be able to develop a car with Core Computing. It is incredibly complex. There were many who warned, but the management at the time chose not to listen to the warnings. They wanted to make a Tesla and ignored the warnings and forced the project forward, says a source with unique insight into the development work.

-From the beginning, it was intended that the successor to the Volvo XC90 would be released in two versions: Full hybrid and electric car. But quite soon, Volvo chose to scrap the version with a combustion engine and turn the SPA2 platform into a pure electric car platform. But the design of the car was already complete, and even today the car has a hood where a combustion engine can fit.

-Pretty soon the IT project ran into major problems, as engineers and developers at Volvo Cars had no experience in developing the Core Computing technology. It is based on a main chip from Nvidia that communicates with several other chips on an integrated circuit, a so-called System on a Chip (SoC). Despite over 100 people working on the development, progress was slow and problems and bugs were widespread.

- The problem is that there are several cores that communicate with each other. It is almost impossible for engineers outside of Nvidia to debug the chip, a source told Carup.

https://carup.se/volvo-ville-sla-tesla-med-ex90-vi-varnade-dem/
https://www.motor1.com/news/724813/volvo-ex90-missing-features-delivery/

Yikes.

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[Rivdog]

Who would actually buy it in that state? Plus an expected vampire drain of 3% per day until they come up with a software fix? I can hardly believe they’re gonna bring it to the market that way. Volvo might really damage its reputation if they do.

 

[COdogman]

The executives at these large automakers are really screwing up EV adoption by trying to fake their way through the steps of creating new vehicles. Their own people are warning them and they won’t listen. And every story like this understandably scares off people who are curious about making the switch.

 

[elektrode]

Yeah. Yikes.

One reason my wife wanted this car was to avoid being stressed about the state of the software - akin to the early adopter stress we had with our R1T almost 2 years ago.

Volvo being a seasoned car maker, was thought to be able to avoid that.

I may have to start the lobbying for an R2 at this point. If one has to wait until mid 2025 for the complete software features and schedule a hardware replacement, then how s00n after that does the R2 roll out?

 

[Marchin_MTB]

Maybe Volvo could see if they can license software from Rivian?

 

[Davethadog]

Honestly, aside from the battery drain maybe being worse (although a lot of folks here had similar issues early on), a lot of these are features that didn’t ship with Rivians at first or are still not even planned. Seems less excusable from a legacy manufacturer but also not unprecedented.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Honestly, aside from the battery drain maybe being worse (although a lot of folks here had similar issues early on), a lot of these are features that didn’t ship with Rivians at first or are still not even planned. Seems less excusable from a legacy manufacturer but also not unprecedented.

False equivalency. Rivian never promised CarPlay. Very clearly said “no” and why, repeatedly. But people refuse to listen. Bi-directional charging was never promised. But they listened and are continuing to work on it, via a new home charger. LiDAR was never touted to public. And while some walk-back has occurred, Driver+ was never touted to be 100% hands-off FSD (but people made assumptions).

 

[DuoRivian]

The executives at these large automakers are really screwing up EV adoption by trying to fake their way through the steps of creating new vehicles. Their own people are warning them and they won’t listen. And every story like this understandably scares off people who are curious about making the switch.

VW made a good decision to have a JV with Rivian. Sounds like $5B well spent!

 

[Davethadog]

False equivalency. Rivian never promised CarPlay. Very clearly said “no” and why, repeatedly. But people refuse to listen. Bi-directional charging was never promised. But they listened and are continuing to work on it, via a new home charger. LiDAR was never touted to public. And while some walk-back has occurred, Driver+ was never touted to be 100% hands-off FSD (but people made assumptions).

That’s why I said Rivian doesn’t even plan to have CarPlay. Bidirectional was promised even before the first vehicles started shipping en masse and Rivians sensor suite was absolutely touted to the public as part of its advanced sensor suite capable in the future of some level of autonomy. Look im not knocking them at all, im just pointing out it’s not uncommon even with these vehicles to gain additional functionality over the air. Hell, my polestar 2 didn’t have what it has now when I first bought it.

 

[DrewT]

in 2016 I ordered the Volvo C90 T8 PHEV and waited 4 months for delivery . It died on the third day and had to be towed back to the dealer and they could not fix it within a 10 day period so they did refund my purchase . The problem was a hybrid control unit and there we many other owners with the same problem . I heard that Volvo issued a recall all T8's for "seatbelt issues " and while they were in replaced these units at approximately $2500 per vehicle but never did admit the problem . I would be very very cautious about buying any new EV from Volvo .

 

[Ecupip]

VW made a good decision to have a JV with Rivian. Sounds like $5B well spent!

I wonder if the deal is for vehicle software or the new vehicle line software used in vehicle manufacturing/testing they spoke of at the investors meeting.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

I wonder if the deal is for vehicle software or the new vehicle line software used in vehicle manufacturing/testing they spoke of at the investors meeting.

If it was manufacturing software, VW wouldn’t have sent cloaked Audis to Rivian to fiddle with and confirm that Rivian’s software could operate the Audis. https://www.rivianforums.com/cloake...ting-how-vws-5-billion-rivian-bet-transpired/

 

[iansriv]

The executives at these large automakers are really screwing up EV adoption by trying to fake their way through the steps of creating new vehicles. Their own people are warning them and they won’t listen. And every story like this understandably scares off people who are curious about making the switch.

It's not just automakers. Legacy companies have a hard time with this level of evolution. Look at what the iPhone did to the blackberry. Look at what fintech is doing to the old guard. Evolve or die.

 

[Khaos]

Had a pre-order that we backed out of because the pricing was so similar to the R1S. Pretty happy we ended up ordering a Gen2 R1S tbh

 

[W1SE]

Yeah. Yikes.

One reason my wife wanted this car was to avoid being stressed about the state of the software - akin to the early adopter stress we had with our R1T almost 2 years ago.

Volvo being a seasoned car maker, was thought to be able to avoid that.

I may have to start the lobbying for an R2 at this point. If one has to wait until mid 2025 for the complete software features and schedule a hardware replacement, then how s00n after that does the R2 roll out?

My wife was waiting for EX90 she finally just got R1S. She is happier than she expected to be even though She never really loved my R1T

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