Volvo is preparing to roll out "one of the biggest over-the-air updates in the history of the world" later this year when it remotely installs a new infotainment interface in 2.5 million cars worldwide.
Every Volvo equipped with the company's Android Automotive operating system – which was launched in 2020 on the XC40 Recharge (now badged EX40) – will receive the new Volvo Car UX (user experience) that features in the EX30, EX90 and new EX60.
It means that a 2020 Volvo will effectively have the same displays and functionality as the latest models - and, importantly, it will swap the previous-generation Google in-car assistant for the new AI-powered Google Gemini system that's in the new cars.
The update had been planned for last year before being pushed back for further development, but now Volvo chief technology officer Anders Bell (below) has told reporters that "it's in the final stages of testing validation" and will be launched in the coming months.
Hailing it as "one of the biggest over-the-air updates in the history of the world", he said the aim is to essentially bring those older models up to date, which is widely touted as the main benefit of modern cars being 'connected': with the ability to update remotely, they can stay 'in-date' for far longer than before.
Bell acknowledged that Tesla regularly performs huge fleet-wide updates of its cars but said Volvo operates in more countries, making this one of the most significant yet.
He also said all updated models will have essentially the same infotainment as the EX90, allowing for some slight differences because of the older silicon processing chips and smaller screens.
"We're going to deploy that back to those cars to give them a necessary, very nice upgrade of the owner's interaction experience with the car," he said, adding that once the system has been updated, "it's a pretty easy update to replace the current Google Assistant with Gemini".
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From my perspective, that's utterly appalling. If you bought a car in 2020, you are used to it's user interface and quirks. So now one day, you will get in, and it will function totally differently, and you'll need to re-learn it? Is that a benefit?