>>28643028
China only produces cheap dogshit whoa what is this the year 2000?

>>28643028
/g/-fag here
am a software engineer at volvo (not cars though)
this is 100% correlated to managements push for "accelerating time to market"
not a single person actually understands what "software defined vehicle" means
management think it means reducing development time from 36 months to 18 months and pushing quick software releases to resolve issues
architecture-fags think it means that the car becomes like a phone so you can install apps and features to increase "customer value" over time
me thinks that its just a buzzword since we've ended up running 6 different operative systems on ONE ECU lmao
two different for two different safety levels, one for classic autosar, one for adaptive autosar, one for infotainment, one for high performance computing/edge
i said this would happen but management didnt listen

sorry for blogposting on page 10

>shit software
>just throw new computer in
makeing sense

Isn't the whole point of this brand basically to sell chinashit at inflated prices?
From what I've heard, the software is total garbage in general, to a point where it ruins whatever good engineering there is.
Almost every action requires interacting with it since the Chinese consider touchshit the peak of luxury and elegance. No, there's no light switch, you have to browse through the menus to force the lights on when the automation sees light but doesn't realize it's foggy as fuck. The localization is trash too, and there's all sorts of bugs and inconsistencies---you can't trust the car to remember or not remember its settings, you just have to check them all when you start driving if you don't like surprises. Oops, the media software forgot its settings again and defaulted to MAXIMUM NIGGABASS EQUALIZATION AT 100% LOUD. The attention monitoring also beeps like crazy if you look at the screen for more than 2 seconds, which will likely happen on every drive because there's no telling which settings got properly saved the last time and which ones you'll have to fix again.

You'd expect a Volvo to handle somewhat rough environments too, but the traction control is very laggy and, in some models, only enables full AWD after the rear wheels have been spinning for a few seconds, at which point they might have dug in so deep that the front wheels will struggle to pull them out.

The smaller EVs also somehow have less space than an old VW Golf, and (in the finest Chinese car tradition) surprisingly poor seat/steering wheel adjustments for the driver. Good luck fitting comfortably in there if you do not match the proportions of the standard Chinese human.

sweden yes

>>28645605
>>28646115
I appreciate posts like this. When I'm talking to people like my parents that just want to buy a 2026 model since its "new with new tech," I can articulate these points rather than just talking shit

>>28645605
I guess the main question is if reducing the time to market by cutting quality saves money enough to justify expected negative feedback

Volvo had some of the slowest model turnaround times right now. The 60-line hasn't had significant changes in like 8-9 years and XC90 went 23 years with two generations. While they are generally considered good products from get go, the faster development of German premiums and more robust lineups hog the premium market.

The Volvos made on Geely's platform are dog shit. Supposedly the EX60 will be on Volvo's own EV platform. My friend has an XC40 and it's an awesome car.

>>28646209
maybe short term
its also some kind of attempt to push back on chinese competition
china has not competed in the premium segment before, but they are starting to now
upper management has been absolutely heemed by the chinese, and now they are scrambling to keep relevancy without understanding the product they are in charge of lol

>>28643028
>chinese volvo has chinese car issues
Anything China touches turns into garbage or botnet. I bet the giant push of Opera browser to gamers is to siphon compute for free from high-end hardware. They hide behind a Norwegian company to maintain the image that it's "European" similar to how Volvo is considered a "Swedish" company despite only designing Chinese cars.

>>28647062
>china has not competed in the premium segment before, but they are starting to now
People are realizing that the Chinese have completely different ideas of what constitutes "premium" compared to a western consumer base. The most contentious of that is the BIG GRIRR that pollutes the premium car market since luxury carmakers have tried to appeal to the Chinese, which isn't a great idea since they've been in an economic downturn for five straight years.

>>28645605
>running 6 different operative systems on ONE ECU
what the fuck

>>28647069
you underestimate the importance of the chinese market
whether china is in a downturn or not they are buying ever more stuff
even though margins are basically non-existent chinese oems offer "similar" products at half the price
for lorries and construction machines 99% of chinese customers would rather buy two than one, even if one of them breaks early or needs constant service, the uptime equivalent of having two lorries compared to one is enough
its probably a bit different for the car industry though, idk

>>28647073
yeah, multi-core and centralized architectures were a mistake

>>28647090
>you underestimate the importance of the chinese market
I think the Chinese market is irrelevant, and trying to globalize it only causes product lines to degenerate. If the world worked off of globalization, all products would be produced to Chinese, Indian, and African tastes. They make up the majority of the world population. They also do not actually matter when factoring a quality product, because none of them care about that.
>whether china is in a downturn or not they are buying ever more stuff
Good for them. They can be the center of the universe in their own bubble.

>>28647101
A lot of new money is Chinese and Arabs, it's basically a stereotype that whenever you see someone decked head to toe in flashy expensive designer clothes in an university campus it's always a Chinese student.

>>28646115
>You'd expect a Volvo to handle somewhat rough environments too, but the traction control is very laggy and, in some models, only enables full AWD after the rear wheels have been spinning for a few seconds, at which point they might have dug in so deep that the front wheels will struggle to pull them out.
Are you sure you didn't confuse front and rear?

>>28647186
Nah, their AWD EVs mostly run on the rear motor by default. The other motor only kicks in when the traction control decides it's necessary.
At least in the Geely-based EX30, the traction control has way too much latency for the instant response of an electric motor. In winter conditions, it can take it several seconds to find an appropriate amount of power and/or activate the other motor, during which the car stutter-spins the wheels and either digs them into the snow or slides the rear around on ice.

I think the front motor activates faster if you browse through the touchscreen menus and set the drive mode to "sport", but the car's range in those conditions is bad enough in the default mode.

>>28643028
My decision to never buy a car made after 2015 and never made outside of Japan, Germany, or the US (in that order) makes more and more sense.
>t. 2010 mustang enjoyer
Nucars are a complete fucking disaster and getting worse by the year.
>ipad dashes
>cvts
>wet belts
>turbo 4cyl instead of v6 or v8
What the fuck? Regulators push insane emissions and efficiency standards, resulting in race to the bottom, disposable non-repairable 65k mile cars, it’s so backwards.

>Imagine buying a Volvo post 2000

>>28643028
>malfunctioning phone-as-a-key functionality, a useless keyfob, a keycard that rarely worked quickly, constant phone connection issues, infotainment glitches and error messages
Reminds me of the Finnish motorists' association magazine trying out the Volvo EX30 recently.

Some notes from their test, which spanned 6 months:

The car has no start/power button of any kind, and turns on when the buttonless key fob approaches it. You just walk to the car, open the already unlocked door and flick it into drive.
Or that's how it's supposed to go. It sometimes takes a while to detect the key, but the range is long enough that the car may randomly power on and off if the car is parked in front of a house and the key is at just the right distance inside the house. This also drains the key's batteries rapidly and may eventually glitch the key or the car, requiring a ritual where you hold the key fob against the B pillar to unlock the car. There's no convenient place for the key inside the car.
The key may have been replaced entirely by the smartphone app in later revisions, which may be an improvement, though now you have to endure the humiliation ritual of tapping another piece of screen glass to start your drive.

The lock in the driver's door froze in -8 C weather and wouldn't lock properly. The phone app kept spamming messages about the car not being locked. Clicking "lock" in the app made the app claim the car is now locked, even though this wasn't the case. The car alarm triggered when the malfunctioning door was opened physically, possibly because the key was having another slow proximity unlock episode.
The locks worked again after thawing, but the dealer service replaced them anyway. The factory grease in them was found unsuitable for cold weather.

>>28647448
(continued)

A software patch tried to fix the Rear Cross Traffic Alert when reversing, but instead made stationary objects such as nearby walls register as traffic. Also, even after patches, the driver attention monitoring randomly loses track of the driver's face, and distracts the driver with loud warning noises.
The defrost function for the mirrors and rear window can't be activated while the car is in reverse. The UI design just doesn't support that.

The adaptive cruise control suddenly accelerated way too hard in non-ideal conditions once, instantly deleting all rear grip. With the traction control being so slow, the driver found himself steering a violently drifting car for a moment.
In general, the car has poor steering and automatic assist functions for a 2-ton brick that goes from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.6 seconds (the performance is somewhat lower when the battery is below 50%).

The EX30 Cross Country they tested separately added a very "sporty" rooftop cargo basket option. It has no good built-in means of securing any cargo and makes a loud wind noise that is audible inside the car.
It seems to be a bit lacking in aerodynamics, as it roughly halves the car's highway range when attached. They concluded the basket thing is probably for social media photos only.

Overall, the car was found tolerable to drive if you turn off the lane assist, driver attention monitoring and the automatic speeding warning at the start of every drive, which requires a large number of screen taps. The suspension's a bit bouncy but it drives fairly smooth when something stupid isn't happening.
It also has the worst seats and ergonomics Volvo has put in a car in decades.

>>28647454
Oh, and the test driver also lost the original charging cable when it wouldn't unlatch from a charging station. Unclear if that was the charger's fault or the cable's.
In another charging incident, the cable lock in the car's charging port had snapped shut without a cable being plugged in, preventing a cable from being inserted into the port. Apparently it just does that sometimes. The UI doesn't offer a function to unlock the port if charging is not in process.
The instructions for the fix procedure suggest removing a bit of upholstery using a flat-head screwdriver or something to access the cable lock latch. He managed to do it with a finger, at the cost of some bleeding.

The Plus trim also comes with Harman Kardon audio, but the car sometimes fails to detect it properly on start, leading to horribly bass boosted sound rattling the car and its occupants (it may be loading an eq profile for the base trim's audio instead). The only way to fix it is to restart the system until it works, which can't be done while the car is moving.

The articles compared the car to the VW ID.3, which similarly threw away a functional but slightly dated platform, and replaced it with terribly ill-considered UX and more bugs than one could reasonably list.

How reliable is the drive train and other mechanical components, though?

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>>28647069
All of these cars with these squinty headlights must be a way to appeal to the Chinese too. They make the front of the cars look like Chink eyes. Coincidence?? I thinka0x82 not.

The upcoming EX60 and EX40 are on Volvo's own platform and made in Sweden. I'd opt for those rather than the chink crap that is EX30/90.