- Volvo’s bug-filled EX90 flagship has the Swedish automaker in damage control, the Financial Times reports.
- It’s racing to patch software and prevent new issues from springing up.
- Now the company faces an uphill battle of rebuilding its reputation for fundamental next-gen car technology.
Like many automakers, Volvo set out into the electric vehicle space to make a statement. A focus on Scandinavian design philosophy, a dash of safety and a whole lot of next-gen tech would solidify its footing. There’s just one thing that the Swedish brand probably wasn’t anticipating: loads of software bugs.
The company’s flagship EX90 is plagued with them. It’s not alone; many legacy car manufacturers are running into digital problems that are complicating the transition to a modern automotive age. Now these same brands are scrambling to fix bugs and launch true software-defined vehicles.
Photo by: Volvo
Earlier this year, Volvo brought back former CEO Håkan Samuelsson to relieve Jim Rowan, who came from the vacuum maker Dyson in 2022 without car industry experience. His mission, according to the Financial Times: salvage a company “buried” under titanic development costs for its EVs, starting with the EX90, and right the ship.
Samuelsson came in swinging. Within weeks of his rehiring (which is contracted for two years), he announced a sweeping $1.87 billion in cost reductions, including layoffs totaling around 3,000 people. He’s also taking on the bugs.
“There will always be risks of course for bugs when you introduce software,” Samuelsson said in an interview with the outlet. “But in the last two years, we have had a level that was too high and unacceptable for customers and that is what we have been working on very intensively.”
The acknowledgement comes with the underlying pledge to do better. Still, the company is officially in damage control mode. The EX90 set a dirty stigma for Volvo’s lack of ability to smoothly execute the rollout of future vehicle technology, and that’s not something any auto company wants amid the industry’s biggest shift in a century.
Photo by: Volvo
Samuelsson said Volvo is working to reducing software complexity and ramping up testing standards. That doesn’t mean that Volvo will be free from software glitches in the future, though. Samuelsson openly warned that this effort won’t free Volvo or any other automaker from the digital gremlins entirely:
“There is no book to read about how this should be done […] if you are the first one, you have to write your manual as well,” he said.
Volvo’s woes are far from isolated. Take Toyota, for example, which promised to release its new Arene software platform this year. According to an engineer from Toyota’s software subsidiary, Woven, that spoke with Financial Times, Arene is “horrendous.”
“It’s full of bugs,” said the engineer. “It’s not an operating system, it’s just a series of tools.”
This is a global problem. Legacy automakers are struggling with their own software issues as they retool decades-old, hardware-centric platforms into ones that are built on a software-first principal and managed by agile tech teams. That move alone is a struggle for companies that are so focused on lengthy product lifecycles planned years in advance. It’s even more of a challenge to move from an industry that silos development and engineering for products.
In Volvo’s defense, at least it’s doing something about the problem with some urgency. The automaker is tackling the problem head-on while also showing some humility. Samuelsson is acknowledging that software bugs are an issue and, while the industry will never be fully rid of them, it at least plans to prioritize limiting how impactful they are.
If the automaker can truly write the manual, perhaps other legacy brands will follow. EV-first brands like Tesla and Rivian have shown how powerful software-centric automakers can be—now legacy brands need to get with the times or risk being left behind permanently with a dinged reputation.