Volvo's safety technology will be free of subscription fees. The upcoming SUV, the EX90 MY2024 will have outstanding safety technologies, such as the new LiDAR sensor system integrated in the roof, with a total of eight cameras and five other radar modules, and none of the features will be linked to the payment of a monthly fee. All these systems will always be basic and available.
Whether in the future Volvo should also think of implementing the business that revolves around subscription services, as important brands such as BMW and Volkswagen already do, it is not yet known. But not because Volvo hasn't given any news about it, but precisely because it hasn't yet decided how it will behave in the future. To say it is Gaurang Kalsaria, product manager of the Swedish house.
“Honestly, we haven't really thought about how we're going to offer all this new technology,” he said. “Many people are going in that direction, but it's still a decision we have to make,” Kalsaria said.
Basic equipment such as heated seats may not be paid for, but it cannot be ruled out that the same fate will befall safety technology. It must be taken into account that Mercedes, for example, in 2022 earned over a billion dollars just for the payment of software updates. A figure that would appeal to anyone.
In the meantime, however, the LiDAR system developed for the EX 90 will work immediately and at no additional cost. The new technology will therefore allow the owner to have a large 360 view of the vehicle's surroundings in real time. Thanks to this system, the EX90 only needs a hardware upgrade to become a semi-autonomous driving vehicle.
Another special feature of the new SUV is bidirectional charging, which will allow it to power any other electronic device, including other vehicles or… the home.
With the new electric vehicle, Volvo has decided to embrace the concept of an ecological vehicle as much as possible, and therefore 50 kg of material inside are of natural origin or recycled. Even the fabric that covers the seats, a sort of imitation leather that the company has called "Nordic", comes from PET bottles and biomaterials from Swedish and Finnish forests. Up to the floor mats, whose material is 100% recycled nylon, whose sources are also abandoned fishing nets recovered in the oceans