Volvo Automotive Group helps chart a brand new path in car electronics as an early adopter of Google’s Android Automotive working system. By getting in on Android’s floor flooring, Volvo is also taking part in a task in shaping an infotainment platform that may populate throughout auto manufacturers.
Infotainment programs have turn into a high-tech battleground for automakers in search of differentiation and new income sources from subscription providers. Not all producers are satisfied that exterior suppliers are the best way to do battle.
Volvo’s luxurious rivals Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have plowed tens of millions of {dollars} into growing highly effective and bespoke programs to show their dashboards into outsized sensible units.
The Swedish firm took a extra pragmatic method, selecting to abort additional improvement of its Sensus Join infotainment system in favor of hooking up with Silicon Valley.
Stellantis has additionally adopted Android Automotive through its Uconnect 5 system. Whereas the automaker affords non-Google providers, akin to Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant and TomTom navigation, Volvo’s model of Android Automotive options Google Maps, Google Assistant and the Google Play app retailer.
“We as an organization are aiming to steer in digitalization,” Sanela Ibrovic, Volvo Vehicles head of linked expertise, informed Automotive Information final week. It made sense to group up with a large on this area, Ibrovic mentioned.
The timing was proper. About six years in the past, Google launched one other model of the expertise, underneath the marginally totally different identify Android Auto, that relied on a smartphone to ship media, navigation and different cellular providers to a car head unit. However the tech behemoth has larger ambitions.
The brand new method, Android Automotive, takes the telephone out of the equation. The vehicle-based working system additionally delivers deeper integration with automotive programs, akin to local weather management and onboard cameras.
And Android Automotive affords entry to a library of third-party apps with the potential to ship new performance to drivers and extra income alternatives to automakers.
Extra essential for carmakers is that Google’s system is future-proofed. Infotainment programs previously had been superior at launch however didn’t sustain in performance over time.
With Android Automotive, “that is first time we may have one thing that continues to evolve,” Volvo Vehicles Product Supervisor Fredrik Hulth mentioned. “We get Android updates, we get Google providers updates, however our improvement groups are additionally persevering with so as to add performance.”
Volvo launched Android Automotive final yr on the Polestar 2 — the primary high-volume mannequin from its all-electric affiliate. Volvo then introduced the system to its XC40 Recharge battery-electric compact crossover.
Know-how is turning into a significant differentiator amongst manufacturers, AutoPacific analyst Ed Kim mentioned.
“As a smaller luxurious model, Volvo is smart to overachieve within the infotainment expertise entrance because the Google Automotive OS affords actual and clear benefits over conventional infotainment programs,” Kim mentioned. “Google account and have integration into Volvo’s infotainment brings a stage of comfort, intuitiveness and ease of use not seen in another luxurious manufacturers’ competing programs.”
Volvo’s early-adopter standing affords a aggressive benefit — however a short-lived one. Different automakers are embracing the platform. Basic Motors and Ford Motor Co. have additionally signed on to make use of Google’s system.
Being early out of the gate with Android Automotive, particularly with low-volume EV fashions, will assist set up Volvo’s new merchandise. However it doesn’t present a sustainable benefit over different automakers, mentioned Sam Abuelsamid, Guidehouse Insights’ principal analyst.
For Volvo and different automakers, the long-term profit is just not having to develop and help a proprietary working system and customized purposes. Bespoke infotainment programs could be a differentiator, however it’s not clear whether or not they provide a tangible benefit, he mentioned.
“Automakers have spent huge sources on it over the previous 15 years,” Abuelsamid mentioned.
Volvo Vehicles CEO Hakan Samuelsson views the tech partnership as a solution to play to particular person strengths. Google makes a speciality of voice recognition and navigation programs, he mentioned. “Why not work with them if it means we may have a greater navigation system and higher voice management?” he mentioned. “You must be humble sufficient to confess that some issues you shouldn’t attempt to develop in-house.”
For that partnership to work, Volvo needed to toss some outdated methods of doing enterprise. As a substitute of entrusting the event to a provider, Volvo labored instantly with Google on the brand new working system. “We managed to get the engineer-to-engineer, manager-to-manager dialogue on a kind of each day foundation,” Ibrovic mentioned.
Volvo and Google engineers labored collectively on the software program repositories.
“If Google discovered one thing that was incorrect, they might drop us a name,” Hulth mentioned.
Collaboration was key to adapting the Android platform to an automotive software.
Engineers had to determine a solution to modify the working system in order that it activates with out requiring an prolonged reboot time, Hulth mentioned. A car, not like a smartphone, is designed to be utterly turned off on the finish of a drive.
“It takes 30 or 60 seconds to begin up,” Hulth mentioned. “We will not have that each time you begin the automotive. That’s the place we collaborated so much, to get the start-up time all the way down to ranges so the client expertise is nice.”
Volvo plans to make Android Automotive accessible in automobiles constructed on its Scalable Product Structure, or SPA, which is used on fashions such because the XC60 crossover.
Google’s system additionally will likely be constructed into fashions produced on Volvo’s second-generation SPA2 platform, which can debut in 2022 with the launch of the third-generation XC90 crossover.
Automotive Information Europe contributed to this report.