But, he said, the pioneering nature of the EX90, as a wholly new technical proposition, meant that it was “more than just a car – it was an entire new, profound way of making a car, and with that the whole platform, the software factory, all the processes…”
It was “unfortunate” that some of the early bugs “spilled over to early customers”, he said. “We need to keep our challenges inside the company.” But as of the last software update, the EX90 now has “better quality metrics than the rest of the cars”.
“The shaky days are over”, he said. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s done now. It’s over. Now we are stabilising and we need to keep polishing the diamond.”
‘The diamond’ is the technical stack that underpins all the EX90’s systems and features in its latest form in the new ES90 saloon – as well as the upcoming EX60, to be revealed on 21 January.
Bell does not anticipate that these cars will endure such a troublesome launch. “It’s not something we will repeat with every car, because we will not launch a new software stack ever again in the history of the company.”
The root of the early issues, he explained, was that Volvo was “the first legacy car company to actually come through with level-five, fully software-defined vehicles” and so “had to invent a lot of stuff ourselves. There was simply nothing to buy, or a manual or tools on how to do it.
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