Volvo is at an inflection point. The company has finally launched the new Volvo EX90 — it’s long-awaited flagship electric SUV, designed to take on other premium large SUVs like the Rivian R1S. The new vehicle offers Volvo’s signature Scandinavian style, but with modern features and Google’s Android Automotive software.
Beyond being its first major electric SUV release, perhaps more important is the fact that the EX90 also represents the launch of Volvo’s so-called Superset platform. Essentially, Superset is the Volvo-designed tech stack that is supposed to be used on all of its upcoming electric vehicles, containing all the modules and software necessary to power a built-out next-generation lineup of EVs.
In other words, the tech underlying the EX90 will be reused for its upcoming luxury sedan, the ES90, along with cheaper vehicles like the EX60 and whatever else it has coming down the pipeline.
Volvo has some tough competition ahead of it. While the company is seemingly beating its legacy automaker competitors to so-called software-defined vehicles, it also has to compete with newcomers like Rivian, which has been hailed for its excellent software and modern selection of features.
At CES 2025, I had the opportunity to get behind the wheel of an EX90 with Volvo’s CTO Anders Bell, where we chatted about the Superset platform, Volvo’s approach to software, and more.
Digital Trends: Let’s start with software-defined vehicles (SDVs). Everyone says that they’re building SDVs. How do you guys define an SDV?
Anders Bell: So it’s a really good question because there is no industry definition of it. I think I’ve seen some pretty decent attempts online to [define it] similar ADAS — that’s level 1 to 5. There’s an SDV level 1 to 5, right? But for us, it’s because we already do over-the updates to the current fleet. We’re going to do 2.5 million cars, uplifting the whole UI experience on 2.5 million cars on the road globally this year. That’s what we’re doing with the existing technology base. We can already do pretty deep OTAs. The thing is, this car is designed from the ground up. It’s born digital, so to speak. So it’s a flat topology and a typical architecture based around a core computer, which in this case is Nvidia Orin NX, with a user experience computer, which is a Qualcomm Snapdragon.
One of the reasons we’re working with Qualcomm is that we also do Android Automotive OS and full-out Google Automotive Services, and of course Qualcomm and Google are super tight. So that’s a good match because that means we can also stay on the bleeding edge of the [Google Automotive Services] stuff.
When you look at Jensen [Huang] talking about all the car makers using Nvidia Silicon…that’s good. Most of them, I think everybody but a few of us, use the Nvidia core computer as a domain-based ADAS computer. It only does ADAS. In our case, it’s a core computer. It’s the central piece of orchestrating all of the vehicle functions, including ADAS.
Digital Trends: Are there any trade-offs to that?
Anders Bell: Yes and no. As Jensen mentioned yesterday as well, we’re ISO 26262 compliant, so we have all the functional safety requirements. Of course, it’s more complicated to achieve that — the separation of concerns, etc. — when you’re executing more stuff in one environment. But that’s just mostly work. For us, it’s over time efficient, so we can execute and create. It’s all about creating an open network of the car compared to the old kind of car where it’s a system of systems with very limited interaction.
In the software-defined vehicle, the camera in the ADAS system is a camera. Its primary reason to exist is ADAS, stay in lane and hit the auto-brake. That’s why we put the camera there, but now it’s a camera. You can use it as a dash cam, you can do sentry mode, you can program it to take a snapshot every time you blink left, if you would like to. I don’t know why you, but you could. I think this is where the car really becomes much more like a computer on wheels, where every single piece of hardware is accessible and exposed to innovation and cross-fertilization. The number of combinations of functions you can do is pretty much endless.
So, the view on the car becomes completely different. The car is a hardware product, including compute, sensing and actuation — the ability to move stuff. It needs to be looked at like it has capabilities to be unlocked over time with software and also combined in new ways which we haven’t thought about before. Which is not possible to do with the domain-based car.
So, software-defined vehicles, back to your original question… I’m sure some auto companies say, “Yeah, this is fully software-defined,” which means they can do OTAs. Sometimes only for the infotainment system. Sometimes much deeper. But for me, the software-defined vehicle, it’s full depth. Like, every node — there’s no kind of black box ECUs in the system. You can reach every actuator and every sensor. The capabilities are exposed across through APIs. So, you can pretty much do anything you would like to with software. So, then you have all the complexity with safety, separation of concerns, etc., that needs to be in place. But for me, that’s the software-defined vehicle, where it’s a fully integrated organism.
Digital Trends: When you say all the actuators are exposed through APIs, is that just to Volvo or to developers?
Anders Bell: No, initially to us. Then, of course, over time, a certain aspect we are happy to share with third parties, etc. It’s how the direction is going to grow. It’s right now for us to focus really on creating that infrastructure inside the car where we have the exposed APIs. Because what we gain from that ourselves is development speed. Now we can upgrade modules, upgrade the next generation drive units, next generation screens, next generation user experience computers. And we can do that very efficiently, and launch with minimal splash into production because we have standardized APIs. The software-defined car is absolutely not a static object. It needs to continuously improve every single aspect, all the mechanical and electrical components need to be continuously improved. So drive units, battery management systems, charging algorithms, seats, instrument panels, everything. Screens will become better and better. We will upgrade the screens over time to keep the whole tech stack competitive, but also not let complexity grow out of control. So it’s updating both the cars in production and the ones on the drawing boards the same new hardware.
Digital Trends: You’re talking about having a lot of control over every aspect of the vehicle. How do you think about not having so much control over the software by using Android Automotive?
Anders Bell: I think Android Automotive is one aspect, right? We’re super happy with our collaboration with Google. It’s always about choosing your partners. I think this comes with a new territory as well. As a car maker, you need to choose strong partners to work and co-develop with because you can’t do everything yourself. Everything would be kind of mediocre. So we’re super happy with the collaboration with Google and the roadmap that they have and that we have together with them.
Some things our key partners do so much better than us, and we want to be part of that and provide that to our customers, to provide the best possible in-car user experience. At the same time, of course, we will have Apple wireless CarPlay for the customers who want that. It’s the customer that needs to choose their own ecosystems. We can’t really dictate to them what they should use. We want to integrate into the customer’s lives and not other way around.
Digital Trends: It’s refreshing to hear a legacy automaker admit that they can’t do everything themselves because a lot of them are trying and failing.
Anders Bell: Yeah, I mean, we need to be realistic, right? I mean, look at this car. It’s fantastic. We’ve done a stellar job. It’s quiet. It’s the safest Volvo we’ve ever designed. Beautiful ride — I mean, you can sit in the third row and speak in normal conversation voice to the people in the front in a seven-seater, which is rare. So those things we’re really, really good at. We have a fantastic roadmap on propulsion energy and drive units, making very, very high-performance and efficient EVs. Those things we should focus on. The base tech for the infotainment system, we’re super happy to work with Google because that gives us so many benefits. And we are all for being probably the first legacy carmaker to get to the position on SDVs where we are right now. We are all for standardization of emerging technologies, working through key technology partners. There’s no reason that we should have everything unique in every aspect. We want to customize the customer experience, and are super happy to work with a lot of technology partners, both of the kind of tech partners like Google, Nvidia, Luminar, Qualcomm, but also more traditional automotive partners like Bosch, to really push standardization of emerging technology in automotive.
Digital Trends: Switching gears a bit, can you give me a quick elevator pitch for the Superset platform and explain what’s beneficial to that approach?
Anders Bell: Yeah, I think it starts with the realization that software needs to be on top of every consideration. So the Superset tech stack is based on the understanding that we can only have one software stack to run all our products. So it’s very similar to any successful major tech company, take Apple, Tesla. They’re basically “one tech stack” companies. And that’s the big difference now in automotive compared to the traditional approach with platforms that we had previously, which also served us extremely well. So we still do platforms in the sense of vehicle architectures. This is a SPA2 car. We will have a vehicle architecture, which is SPA3, which is mostly a physical vehicle architecture upgrade or change. They both run on the same propulsion and energy roadmap, meaning the same drive units. It’s a family of drive units we develop ourselves, and manufacture ourselves. Same with the battery. It’s the same roadmap.
We have one compute electronics roadmap for all our cars going forward. But in the end, what’s most important is it’s one software master for all our battery electric vehicles going forward. That is the big change, which means everything needs to fit in the umbrella of the software stack. So the software stack needs to be continuously developed to encompass more functionality. And we basically qualify new technologies into the tech stack. So if you take technology like steer-by-wire, we will qualify that into the tech stack and release it into the one master, then we can configure it into any of our cars. So that is the approach. Superset is the sum of all the capabilities basically, and every car we build is a subset of that.
Digital Trends: Are there any limitations to that around features that some vehicles might need that others won’t have?
Anders Bell: No, not really. Those are typically business decisions. If we want to do something which is fun and a good impact on the market, we will absolutely do it. It doesn’t limit us in any way. Being innovative, making the world’s most complex consumer product, requires fundamental discipline in how you set it up and how you execute. So there’s no built-in inhibitor. You do need to be mindful of complexity though.
I would say that our way of doing software-defined vehicle is not necessarily the right way for everybody. Depending on your bandwidth, how much complexity you have to manage, if you need to go from really entry-level cars all the way up to super luxury cars, maybe that’s not suitable on one tech stack. You might want to have two. You will have a higher need of scalability in functionality and price. You might to pursue different solutions. If we look at where we are, we have a very well-defined bandwidth. We can scale easily from B to F, meaning entry-level cars for the premium segment up to F. On our combined total tech stack.
Digital Trends: There are a few features that are still set to come to this vehicle specifically, like CarPlay.
Anders Bell: CarPlay is coming in a few weeks. That’s in the next scheduled over-the-air update, together with some other improvements. And then we start to get into the cadence of continuously releasing the improvements and features to the fleet. And here’s the thing, right, since everything is on one software master, so once we’ve finished wireless Apple CarPlay, it’s available. It’s done for all the cars coming. We don’t need to redo that piece of work. So it will be done for the EX90, the EX60, all the cars on the road, all the cars rolling out of the factory. And then we’re on to the next functionality or customer feature.
Digital Trends: What about some of the ADAS features that are coming?
Anders Bell: Yeah, it’s coming over time. We have pilot assist now — lane keeping, it changes lane, turn indicator, etc. We will be doing the curve speed adaptation in the spring, and then it just continues. So every single release we will have some kind of incremental ADAS update. We have the team doing the vision perception stack, and they’re literally running code to car every day. So there’s a whole machine of testing validation, releasing a few candidates every day, testing it out, seeing what works, testing new scenarios. So that whole machine is up and running. So we’re getting the hardware on the road now. Now we have software factory connecting to it, and now the journey really begins. So this is all about kind of launching at this moment on feature parity where we need to be, and then we can scale from there.
So this is kind of where automotive is in general. We need to get used to the whole idea of a software-defined product having this paradox, right? So when is it finished? Well, the answer to that never. It’s never finished, right. So then the next question is, well, how do you know when to launch then? Well, when it’s freaking awesome. That’s the only answer you can have, right? So this is the moment we have a freaking awesome car, and we will continuously make it better. But still, I mean, this is how it works at Tesla, Rivian, a lot of the Chinese companies. But for legacy auto, I think getting used to that takes a of time.
Digital Trends: I think there will still be a question around “when is it finished?” When is the car no longer able to handle new features and doesn’t have the compute? How do you think about future-proofing?
Anders Bell: Yeah, so that’s a good question. It’s also kind of a new activity for a legacy car company. When we look at our roadmap, we try to predict the compute and hardware requirements going forward year by year, and see when do we plan which upgrade and what do we need at the get-go. What we need at the get-go obviously can’t be what you need specifically in 2025, but it’s what needs to carry you for the next few years to do the functionality. So you need to predict kind of the functionality software, but also to some extent how good we will be at making the code efficient so can execute on the minimal amount of resources in the best possible way.
So kind of how we work. And when we look at the SOCs, when we look at memory, communication protocols, when do we do the different upgrades, right? We already announced we will be upgrading to Nvidia Thor. We are working on the Qualcomm roadmap, so we know when we will be upgrading the different stuff. We know how much memory we need when and where. So it’s kind of a new game of being ahead of the game and never ever bottoming out, but never going completely crazy and throwing in a lot of hardware that you’re never going to capitalize on either. It’s a fine balance.
Digital Trends: Yeah, trying to tell the future a little bit.
Anders Bell: Yeah, the same goes for sensing to a very large extent, and more and more on interior sensing. Interior sensing we talk a lot about because it’s the ADAS. Interior sensing is as important. There’s a lot of interior sensing here going on. You have capacitive sensing in the steering wheel, you have a torque control, you have a driving monitoring camera cleverly hidden. So we try to do very, very discreet technology implementations.
The car is supposed to take care of you and not distract you. But those are also including interior radars, pressure sensors, buckle switches, track position switches. That’s another area where we kind of watch the minimal set of interior sensing that gives you the richest data set possible and how do we get there. And it’s always a game of kind of collecting data, correlate, and then you can start removing when you feel comfortable that your robustness is there to rely on the data.
Digital Trends: Are you using the LiDAR sensor currently?
Anders Bell: Yeah, currently we are mostly collecting and correlating. And it’s part of the roadmap of continuously rolling out better and better functions. So in the roadmap, we know when we have the first proper long-range user cases coming out into the fleet. So it is active, but more to collect and correlate right now. And then we go live. This is another aspect of working with a software-defined vehicle. You put powerful sensing on, and then over time you unlock it. First instance typically involves running in some type of shadow mode to really validate that what we’ve done in the lab and in our own test fleet works with the right robustness in the real world.
Digital Trends: I’d say that’s a better approach than starting with including sensors and then taking them away.
Anders Bell: [Laughs] Yeah, it could be. But this car that we’re driving right now is basically equipped with the ADAS Superset. So in this one, we have full redundant systems — braking, steering, compute. So we have two Nvidia SOCs in this one. We have all the bells and whistles on radar and ultrasonics and cameras. And from this Superset, this is the current Superset, we are working with and producing other configurations with a smaller sensor set for less, more ADAS-focused cars. This is an ADAS-focused car. But it’s the same sensors, it’s the same software, it’s the same set. We will do a version without LiDAR for instance. You will have really, really good ADAS because you can cross-correlate up all the way up to this car. So using that kind of superset approach also here gives us the benefit of being able to develop very high functionality on the lower sensor sets.
Digital Trends: You said you’ll have a different vehicle without LiDAR. How will you approach educating the consumer about why they should or shouldn’t buy a car with or without LiDAR?
Anders Bell: I think I’ll pass on that one for now because this is something that will be kind of embedded in future launches. But we’re always looking at a wide range of technologies. Right now, we see that LiDAR is giving a lot of benefits in the automation aspect of things, driving. And that’s primarily where we put it right now. Then there’s always other technologies that we’re looking at that could do the same or a similar job.
I’m super happy with kind of how we made [the EX90]. You have like basically two supercomputers behind here plus a very capable Qualcomm Snapdragon. It’s all hidden. It’s all discreet in this calm Scandinavian interior where you hide the cameras and everything as much as possible. This is the kind of human-centric implementation of technology we want to do. So the car is bleeding-edge technology, but it’s not in your face.
We’re going to do over-the-air update to two and a half million existing cars globally during this year, to create a harmonious experience across the UIs. So [the EX90’s display] is a 14-inch screen. We have 11 and 9-inch versions for the older cars. So all the cars we have driving on Android Automotive since 2021 will get a similar customer experience with your media, phone, quick action bar, your fixed bar, map. So it’s a much better layout than what we have currently in production. Personally, I don’t miss CarPlay anymore. I think CarPlay was great in the old cars because UIs generally sucked big time. And I rent cars now when I travel with the family, it’s like I always plug in CarPlay, but for this, I don’t miss it anymore. But again, the customer should decide. We make it available for them and they can decide what they want to use.
