We can have this thread for video and print test drives.
Test drive
02s80
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224 Posts
they are not apple or tesla but imagine themselves to be in the same trend driving game. it's why they think they can ignore obvious and crippling criticism because their idea of cultural trends will provide the growth to cover up decline or abandonment of traditional markets.
recycling of interior material is such a gimmick. it's just marketing and i've evaluated it as such. lithium mining is thousands times that in terms of material cost and land usage. but more to the point, it is not a moat or competitive advantage. it's just a marketing direction that takes money and time to build up, and also is self limiting due to tradeoffs.
from a demo positioning pov it's not entirely dumb as elon is unpopular with liberal youth and this segment also buys into the perfunctory environmentalism marketing, and they might be new to cars so don't really care about the lack of instrument display or ipad while driving controls. but the thing is this segment's preferences is in many cases opposite of the mainstream and by going all in on this you will lose out on mainstream adoption.
the issue is that outside of small town europe the volvo target demographic is weighted down by not having parking spots and expensive real estate in their preferred big urban cities. yes, downtown brooklyn is full of volvos but there's only so many you can fit there. i don't see the upside here to warrant giving up on the mainstream segment where volvo still has some brand cache.
recycling of interior material is such a gimmick. it's just marketing and i've evaluated it as such. lithium mining is thousands times that in terms of material cost and land usage. but more to the point, it is not a moat or competitive advantage. it's just a marketing direction that takes money and time to build up, and also is self limiting due to tradeoffs.
from a demo positioning pov it's not entirely dumb as elon is unpopular with liberal youth and this segment also buys into the perfunctory environmentalism marketing, and they might be new to cars so don't really care about the lack of instrument display or ipad while driving controls. but the thing is this segment's preferences is in many cases opposite of the mainstream and by going all in on this you will lose out on mainstream adoption.
the issue is that outside of small town europe the volvo target demographic is weighted down by not having parking spots and expensive real estate in their preferred big urban cities. yes, downtown brooklyn is full of volvos but there's only so many you can fit there. i don't see the upside here to warrant giving up on the mainstream segment where volvo still has some brand cache.
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20,164 Posts
I don't think they'll ever go back to knobs at this point but we could all hope. I wonder if there's accident data available on all the SPA cars that use touchscreens to determine if there's anything to these concerns.
For me the move to a touchscreen has been a non-event - it's not like I change the climate settings all that often or access anything on the screen while the car is in motion.
What I meant by "working out the bugs" is the first-year model things that Volvo (and pretty much every other manufacturer) deals with.
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3,240 Posts
There are a lot of automotive reviewers out there that are old school at heart, and don't easily accept how vehicles have evolved. A lot of them would rather have everything analog and a manual transmission. But build a car to their specs and it will become a planter in the middle of the showroom.
The voice activation can take care of most functions that the layman will use day to day, the more advanced stuff is stuff that the gearheads may get into. The same could be said for the Sensus system though I think the AAOS is better in that respect, more user friendly for sure.
The voice activation can take care of most functions that the layman will use day to day, the more advanced stuff is stuff that the gearheads may get into. The same could be said for the Sensus system though I think the AAOS is better in that respect, more user friendly for sure.
There will be some guy on here.. WhAt? BuT bEnJaMiN It'S aLL eLeTriC!? tHeY dOn'T uSe AnY oiL yOu StUpiD iDiOt! 😂
This not a matter of old people too entrenched in how their car drove in 1946 to understand new-fangled stuff like electric lights. Touch controls are a MUCH WORSE answer to the already answered question of how do you turn up the heat.
Speaking of old people, this will be a real danger to old people whose eyes and brains don't go from outside focus to inside focus as fast as they used to. My 80 something year-old mother is a good driver and not a Luddite at all, she had a long career in tech fields. She would probably drive that thing right into a tree trying to make it do something.
Speaking of old people, this will be a real danger to old people whose eyes and brains don't go from outside focus to inside focus as fast as they used to. My 80 something year-old mother is a good driver and not a Luddite at all, she had a long career in tech fields. She would probably drive that thing right into a tree trying to make it do something.
I about went nuts the other day in rough weather with a touch-screen airplane, I was waiting for it to say "I am sorry Dave, I am afraid I can't do that".
V70 climate control:
Modern Volvo climate control with a dead screen:
When I got a new demo car not only was the screen very annoying to use to turn the heat on, I realized a dead screen was a dead car. My V60 would be annoying with screen issues, but at least you could turn the heat on and off.
So save everywhere - on buttons, knobs, wires, plastic, … and do the marketing spin on it like it’s something modern, green or whatever.
I was genuinely looking forward to this one, maybe picking it up for my wife.
But this whole non-sense is ridiculous.
Only touch-****ty-controls, you don’t even get buttons for operating front/rear windows (I blame VW for this kind of ****), yet alone “advanced” functions like wiper sensitivity.
I don’t even want to talk about recycled ****ty plastic or “soundbar”…
No-go for me.
I was genuinely looking forward to this one, maybe picking it up for my wife.
But this whole non-sense is ridiculous.
Only touch-****ty-controls, you don’t even get buttons for operating front/rear windows (I blame VW for this kind of ****), yet alone “advanced” functions like wiper sensitivity.
I don’t even want to talk about recycled ****ty plastic or “soundbar”…
No-go for me.
A lot of it comes down to how well the voice controls work. I’ve got a sensus car and even that lets me control temperature etc. I have to believe that this car has at least that much control. We have no idea at this point how good it actually is (or will be when it reaches our market)
Basically geely's vehicle with volvo's emblem. Mainly targeted for urban Chinese street which is extremely crowded and narrow roads.
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492 Posts
Future volvos will be like these ex30/90.
A shameful saving passed off for sustainability.
Please explain me how your can combine your "safety" mantra with a central screen for which you have to divert your eyes from the road.
It's a relatively economic car with a very economic interior, and if this is a punch in the eye for the ex30, which must be economic, it's much more worse for the ex90 and its aspiring luxury. An extremely expensive car with the interiors of a telephone booth.
Old volvos are turning in their graves.
It's the Dacia level.
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A shameful saving passed off for sustainability.
Please explain me how your can combine your "safety" mantra with a central screen for which you have to divert your eyes from the road.
It's a relatively economic car with a very economic interior, and if this is a punch in the eye for the ex30, which must be economic, it's much more worse for the ex90 and its aspiring luxury. An extremely expensive car with the interiors of a telephone booth.
Old volvos are turning in their graves.
It's the Dacia level.
I can get behind the central screen as long as you have a voice control function on the steering wheel. My Subaru has that and I still have all of the physical knobs. I just tell it to set the temperature to X or change to channel X on Sirius XM. I feel Volvo will integrate this or allow the Google Assistant to take over for these features. At least maybe they'll allow you to customize a home screen for all of your most used functions (or widgets) for easier access. I know on my daily basis in my Subaru, I am not likely to touch any HVAC or radio controls at all. Once things are set to where I want it from day 1, I'm good to go.
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224 Posts
design is fine but there's such thing as tunnel visioning on an abstraction like "clean scandinavian styling for the future" and ignoring the actual functionality requirements of a car. in such a situation the design success can actually create blindspots that allow obvious problems to persist.
Yes, but the problem is advancing a paradigm shift in automotive trends. In other words, maybe all screens aren't good but maybe too many buttons aren't good either. Some people don't mind talking to their cars and giving them voice commands and then they whole interaction with the screen becomes moot. However, some don't, like me, and I'd rather have a few buttons and a screen. So who do you design for?
What bothers me is making the whole car about the center screen. There's so much more clever stuff going on with this Volvo than that. And Volvo was stupid to do something that reminds people of Tesla. It was so unnecessary. Just put in a driver's display and anyone who thought this was a dealbreaker would still be interested in the car. I'm not sure why Volvo has to end leather and do the one screen in the EX30 and Polestar has to remove back windows. I like the sustainability stuff and new materials and the necessary focus on software driven development, but some decisions made by the sister companies are head scratching.
Volvo and Polestar should do functional Scandinavian design. Form follows function not tech can clean up Scadinavian design that compromises function, and in some respects, safety.
I applaud them for designing and building an EV that's around 4,000lbs. My Subaru PHEV is 4,500lbs and has a small 8.8 kW battery. Volvo's weight saving strategy works great to design a dash that works in both right and left hand drive cars, only routing wires and HVAC piping in one spot no matter the driver, and saving weight on materials such as wiring. That all adds up and here you've got a great price for a car.
I'm sure you can have all of your saved settings on one screen of the car so you don't have to fiddle around with 10+ pages of software.
I'm sure you can have all of your saved settings on one screen of the car so you don't have to fiddle around with 10+ pages of software.
Your Subaru PHEV is 4500lbs? You mean, like a Crosstrek? Oh my god.
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