Volvo’s Software Defined Benefits

“The reason why we invested in a software-defined car was safety,” says Bakkenes. With so much of this now revolving around Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), developing better software has been a fundamental way to make cars safer. Volvo’s technique of Gaussian splatting, which I discussed with Bakkenes in 2025, is an example of how that functions. “Gaussian splatting was what we did to make sure that we could simulate more accidents that never happened to improve the performance of the stack.” These improvements could then be installed in the car’s ADAS through new code downloads.

But safety is just one aspect of a car that can be enhanced with software updates, particularly in an electric vehicle. Before the recently launched Volvo EX60 has even reached customers, Volvo has already been able to reduce the 10-80% charging time of the P6 and P10 versions from 18 to 16 minutes. Volvo’s portfolio company Breathe, which optimizes models based on battery chemistry physics, was able to improve its algorithm. This could then be installed in the EX60 as an update, thanks to the car being an SDV.

“The EX60 is our third software-defined vehicle,” explains Bakkenes. “But it’s not just that. It is also the second generation of our zonal architecture, which has been further optimized for BEV. People always ask about what the benefits are for a consumer. It's not just about the car being better over time. Some benefits come straight out of the factory. We have a software-defined product that enables our engineers to utilize the hardware much better. For example, the fact that we're able to squeeze out 810km of range from the drive train has a lot to do with how we can control the battery management system.”

Although the Volvo EX60 can charge at 400kW DC, this high maximum power is not the only reason it can replenish so quickly. It’s also a result of how the software can optimize the charging curve over time, which even provides benefits when only a lower power charger is available. The EX60 can maintain 300kW well beyond 50% capacity, where most BEV batteries will already be dropping off their peak rate by this point. “That is about how much insight you have into how the pack and the cells are functioning so you can charge them with a lot of energy,” says Bakkenes.

The S&P SDV Levels And How Volvo Got Top Ranking

The ability to update is just one feature that S&P Global Mobile uses to rank SDV readiness from one to five. Richard Dixon and Manuel Tagliavini of S&P Global Mobility explained to me the other factors that classify automakers within the five levels. First, the software updating needs to be possible over-the-air, and there are architectural factors as well. The bottom SDV level requires a simple setup that reacts to sensor signals, while the top is a full service-oriented configuration. Linked to this is how the software is structured. Traditionally, cars had individual ECU chips controlling each function (such as braking), each with their own software, but to hit Level 5 an SDV must have all these running on a unified operating system.

Linked to this is how functions are zoned (ie organized by physical location rather than function, which reduces wiring complexity). Additionally, although there have been no reported cases of remote car hacking yet, cybersecurity is a major future-proofing value too, because more features are becoming Internet accessible. Finally, while the CAN bus has been the standard communication system within cars for years, the faster and more general-purpose Ethernet is a must for a full Level 5 SDV.

Surprisingly, Tesla has only reached Level 4 in the latest S&P SDV ranking, coming in fifth in the top ten, even though the company has long been the poster child and arguably the original creator of the SDV. One of the major reasons for this is that, apart from the Cybertruck, Tesla still uses CAN as its backbone bus. This shows how rapidly the SDV concept is developing, and how quickly automakers are being left behind. In the most recent top ten, Chinese companies dominated, with only three Western manufacturers cutting the mustard. Apart from Volvo and Tesla, BMW was the other Western company to achieve a placement, mostly thanks to its recently launched Neue Klasse.

Evolving Volvo SDV Features

The ability to update software means features that didn’t even exist when a car was manufactured might be added later. For example, Volvo has been able to add support for Google Gemini chat functions to XC60 models that are six years old and produced before the GenAI chatbot revolution started. “We had no way of knowing that it would be a fantastic idea to have a generative AI-based assistant in the vehicle,” says Bakkenes. “Yet we’re able to roll it out to every car that we've produced since 2020.”

Achieving Level 5 SDV Readiness is the culmination of a journey for Volvo. “We’re completing this transformation because we've now launched the optimized BEV platform,” says Bakkenes. “We think the EX60’s SPA3 is the world's best electric car platform. It is scalable, flexible, and capable of amazing attributes, like 810km range, super short charge times, loads of tech, and the same class-leading collision avoidance functionality that we're able to put into the larger cars. This Level 5 SDV stack is going to go across the entire product line. It’s also compatible with PHEVs.”

Volvo’s Vision Of An Agentic AI Automotive Future

Generative AI will offer some of the most exciting new capabilities. Helping this has been Volvo’s longstanding use of Google’s software. “The relationship with Google started when we built Android into our cars between 2017 and 2020,” says Bakkenes. “We were the first company in the world to deploy Google Automotive Services built in. We're still lead device partner.” This means that, just as there is a reference device used to develop the latest Android smartphone features, there are reference devices (ie cars) for Google software in vehicles, and they come from Volvo.

“Google has bought quite a few of our cars, meaning that we're jointly developing and debugging Android in our cars, giving us the opportunity of taking the latest Android release to customers much faster than the rest of the industry,” says Bakkenes. “Android is basically an ecosystem of interfaces, which are mandatory for application developers. For example, in Android 17, there are requirements around model context protocol (MCP) interfaces, which enable Gemini to interact with all the applications that you have in the car in a genetic fashion. I can ask Gemini to do something with an app. It will spawn off some activity in the app in the background and do things for me.”

This can help you find a satnav destination without the full address, postcode, or even the business name. You could just know the type of business, an approximate area, and some other unique characteristics. “But the real magic happens when it becomes agentic, when it doesn’t just provide you with information, but helps you do things,” explains Bakkenes. “You can imagine any kind of things that you typically would do - send emails, create calendar invites, book tables, potentially book flights. Agentic AI can do those things on your behalf through MCP. When I set a destination, I can talk about adding and shifting waypoints. You can have a conversational interaction around that.”

Bakkenes also gives an example of how he used Gemini in his own Volvo EX90 to work out whether a TV he wanted to buy would fit in its rear luggage space. AI promises to reconfigure how we use our cars, which Bakkenes has also been experimenting with. “Having a conversational AI in the car is not just about managing the car and the drive,” he says. “I use it to do quick summaries of what customers on social media are saying about our latest software releases. I can also think about creating outlines for documents on my way to work. Because it’s connected to my Gemini account, I have transcripts of everything I've spoken about in my car on my desktop computer so I can pick up when I get to the office. The car has become part of my productivity suite. It makes my time in the car much more useful, which I didn’t foresee because I thought of it much more as an in-car tool.”

“It’s massively significant that Volvo achieved S&P Level 5, thanks to a great software-defined technology stack that is now in three car models, and will go across our entire vehicle range, including PHEVs,” concludes Bakkenes. “Most of the competition either doesn't have a software-defined platform, or they've given up on software-defined platforms, and they've definitely not succeeded in becoming a single tech stack company. The entire ecosystem we built around the cars, the consumer relationship, the interfacing with the mobile app, and the other business we can create around that are all tied to a single tech stack, and that is massively important.”