Volvo had a hell of a time bringing its first “software-defined” cars to market. The EX30 and EX90 are the first products to use the new architecture, built from the ground up to enable over-the-air updates, new software features and a more seamless overall experience. So far, the results have been a disaster.
Both the EX30 and EX90 were delayed. Then, tariffs forced Volvo to ditch the EX30’s planned $35,000 starting price. By the time the pricier EX30 and EX90 arrived here, both still had software bugs that hadn’t been worked out, and the EX90 was missing plenty of features. After driving it, I wrote that it was too unfinished to recommend. A year later, Consumer Reports says the issues haven’t been solved.
In just its first 1,000 miles, the EX90 Consumer Reports bought for testing experienced a litany of issues and bugs. The outlet says that the entire center screen has gone blank a number of times, locking users out of the climate control. Sometimes, the car displays “Starting Up: Your Volvo is getting ready. This will take a few minutes” on the instrument cluster upon startup, and prevents the car from starting for 3-5 minutes. The airbag light also came on for a week, and the SOS system didn’t function until they received an over-the-air update.
The EX90 runs on Volvo’s newest software architecture.
Photo by: Volvo
That is a quite a list for such a short ownership period. Plus, as I noted in my first drive, Volvo still has not delivered many of the software features it promised. For instance, while the EX90 is one of the first cars with a LIDAR sensor from the factory, it still doesn’t actually do anything but “collect data” to enable future functionality. It’s a bad look for Volvo.
CR reached out to Volvo for comment, and a spokesperson recommended installing a software update to fix it.
“We installed that update as soon as our car got back from the dealership, and the airbag warning light immediately turned off,” author Keith Barry says in the story. “However, audio via Bluetooth, the radio, or other sources wouldn’t work, and unprovoked error messages persisted. We’ll continue to monitor how the car performs, but we think the effectiveness of the software update is beside the point. If software version 1.3.18 was required to fix the many bugs we encountered, then the EX90 should not have been sold to the public until 1.3.18 was ready and installed.”
Volvo did not immediately reply to InsideEVs’ request for comment. But this represents a real problem for the company. People who buy an $80,000 or $90,000 SUV should get a product that works on day one. Delivering an unfinished product is not acceptable, and it’s very hard to earn back consumer trust once you lose it. That’s why the billion-dollar software war is such a high-stakes situation.