Volvo’s Jim Rowan, now more than 18 months on the job, has strong opinions on EVs, car software, and autonomy.
  • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.caEnglish
    19·
    1 year ago

    Car manufacturers are not tech companies.

    Let the tech companies handle the tech and let the manufacturers handle building a solid vehicle.

    I’ve never seen an OEM interface solution that was nearly as good as CarPlay or AndroidAuto.

    I like my Mazda, and I like the knob and physical buttons. I don’t like the interface over AA though.

    • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Car companies aren’t stupid though, they know that they make money from their own closed little ecosystems of car parts and servicing and they’re potentially handing Apple and Google control of something worth a lot of money. Hopefully, they’ll get their cut and we can have nice things but we’ll see.

      • what_is_a_name@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        You’re close to the point but missed the elephant. The valuable thing we’re fighting over in this case is all the data collected by the cars.

        Automakers lose some access when it’s Apple or Google serving the infotainment. Apple and Google also get access to this data for free.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    First and foremost, it’s absolutely essential that any updates that we give, especially if it’s in relation to any of the core attributes of the car, regards safety or performance, then we need to be rock solid that that software is going to work.

    And maybe that’s part of the protection as well, having customers that shop in the premium sector that have a little bit more disposable income, that don’t worry as much about inflation, and that really care about the brand attributes like safety and so on.

    And where that makes sense and people really care about having the safety and the reliability of a Volvo, but they choose because of infrastructure or just personal choice, they want to have a plug-in electric hybrid.

    Same goes for the infotainment stack where we are saying we want to have a base level of Volvo OS that we can set on top of, but we also want to offer the choice of Android Auto or Apple CarPlay so that they can then offer all the plethora of choices that they’ve got, whether that’s the different apps that you can download into the car itself that sits on that center stack or just the convenience of having your iPhone or your Android machine connect directly and seamlessly with the car.

    People are tired, maybe distracted, and those accidents happen when you least expect them because if you’re driving a hundred kilometers an hour and all of a sudden you come across a deer or a fallen tree or something, you really don’t have time to react.

    Whatever it was, that was $20, I’m going to double down on that,” or, “I really like the fact that these guys come and change my tires or I get great insurance coverage or whatever.” Those are tangible benefits that I think people say that adds value to the relationship between us and our customers.

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