Exclusive: Volvo tells us why having Gemini in your next car is a good thing
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With tactile HVAC controls, it is way faster to
- set temperature down, if system is like 1 degree per click on the temperature circular knob.
OR
- move manual fan control from 0-5 wherever you want it to be by counting clicks
than saying
"Hello car, set my temperature to X degrees"
So even with 100% reliability, setting it manually is faster. And I assume the car would be less than 100% reliable in responding in case of other people talking together in the car.
Also... I know I was a prick as a child, I'd all the time be screaming commands from the backseat just to infuriate my parents, whereas I'd not be able to reach the HVAC controls from the backseat. =)
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The description of what it could do made me even less interested than I already was.
If there is going to be ai, and I would prefer effort going into a better car, why don't they start with what people actually struggle with in driving a car, not these weird extra things. The answer is that ai isn't much use for any of that.
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Sounds like it lets you do a bunch of tasks while driving that responsible drivers have long since accepted they should not be doing while driving. It can wait.
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Fully agreed, but also, does anyone other than that guy trust AI to actually know if a TV can fit in the car? There is no way it found the dimensions of the box, drew itself a 3d model of it fitting into the car through the openings the car provides, and went "yep, it fits!"
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For when you're out driving and on a whim decide that you suddenly need a particular model of TV. Like a 70 inch CX9EB88-000MT or maybe a ZIZIX900Rm if the CX isn't in stock.
They seriously can't come up with a single remotely plausible utility for this trash shit to exist.
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Is Volvo and other 'We are now a tech company' car companies prepared to offer security updates for this type of software for the next 30+ years? Last I read, the average age of a car in the US is about 13 years. The average length of software support for a specific version of software is a fair amount less. There are GM cars on the road with now non-functional On-Star buttons due to loss of connectivity because of deprecation of 2G and 3G networks. How will the Volvo AI react to being cut off from the mothership? Will Volvo et. al. provide hardware modules for 25 year old cars to allow connectivity to 8 or 9G networks?
Microsoft and other true tech companies have been able to so far justify cutting off support for 10 year old software by claiming that 10 year old hardware is outdated and should be replaced. We may be seeing the end of that policy play out right now due to climbing RAM prices coupled with many millions of older PCs still running Win 10 or earlier being cut off from Win 11 (for reasons) and security updates (because of MS saying so). But Volvo will have a very hard time telling the owner of a 25 year old Volvo that the car should be crushed and replaced because the software is out of date.
Microsoft and other true tech companies have been able to so far justify cutting off support for 10 year old software by claiming that 10 year old hardware is outdated and should be replaced. We may be seeing the end of that policy play out right now due to climbing RAM prices coupled with many millions of older PCs still running Win 10 or earlier being cut off from Win 11 (for reasons) and security updates (because of MS saying so). But Volvo will have a very hard time telling the owner of a 25 year old Volvo that the car should be crushed and replaced because the software is out of date.
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At best it's going to work out the volume of the TV box, probably for a very similarly named model from another century and then say you can fit it in based on the volume of your gas tank.
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Juan Manuel Fangio five times winner of the Formula One World Drivers' Championship literally didn't even turned the car radio on while driving because he said any distractions on the road are an easy way to die and or kill others so no thanks.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
Further, virtually all of those 'examples' are things that take brain cycles away from driving. This isn't helping my driving, it is actively getting in the way. RTFM before you get in the car or just stop and pull it out of the glovebox.
Oh.
Wait.
Anyway, driving directions, phone calls, simple texts. All things that can be done by an non AI computer. Especially if Apple manages to get Siri back to the functionality it started with. Without AI help.
I would under no circumstances think this was something I would actually want in a car. Now, I realize that I, along with apparently most of the posters here are really pulling off in the Luddite direction - as opposed to the technofetishism that many of us started out with. But there are reasons for this and this is one of them. I'm not sure how 'normal' people are going to think about it but I don't think the answer is the one that car manufacturers are looking for.
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I found it useful, if only as another reason to keep Volvo off the shortlist for my next car.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Winning Post.
This isn't about which AI in which UI, it's about claiming to "innovate" or solve problems that don't exist, while in actuality these companies are making the vehicles and the roads they travel on less safe. The already-distracting infotainment systems of yesterday are bad enough. This shit needs to stop, but we know as long as there's a buck to me made, it won't... not until people start dying and the big lawsuits roll in.
I hope Volvo and whoever else does this idiotic, short-sighted thing, gets the absolute shit kicked out of them in court, whether in the US or somewhere else. Have we seen the first billion dollar damages award to a regular citizen yet? I would love that! Screw the proverbial spilled hot coffee thing — this is where the gargantuan damages claims would have serious merit. Your bullshit, in-the-driver's-ear-or-face AI distracts and causes a seven car pile-up, killing 4 people? Time for a legal curb-stomping.
(Also: I feel like you could've snuck the word "fuckin'" right between "the" and "car" to good effect, but this is a minor quibble.)
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Does just outright naming your in-car computer after a mythical divine surveillance system just scream the quiet part out loud about the ambition, the actual maturity of implementation, and the true objective all at the same time; or what?
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So, there is one use case where a competent voice AI system would be nice.
And that is, when I am driving, and no one else is in the car, I would like to be able to ask the assistant to add a specific intermediate destination to the navigation plan.
Specific. As in, exactly what I asked for, and if there is not one in reasonable diversion distance, information to that affect. As in, if I ask for a credit union, do not send me to a bank. If I ask for a Wendy's®, do not send me to a Burger King® just because BK paid for placement this week. And if I ask for a Japanese restaurant, I do not want Thai food. And if there is no Japanese restaurant, just tell me there isn't. Don't make one up. And don't send me 60 miles out of the way, either.
And I do not want this to preempt my ultimate destination. I just need twenty bucks, a Frosty®, and some ramen. I have not bailed on wanting to see my niece this weekend.
This is such low-hanging fruit, and yet nobody has come up with a passable implementation so far.
Nobody wants to spontaneously buy a TV. Everyone spontaneously gets a craving for an ultraprocessed ice-milk beverage food product.
And that is, when I am driving, and no one else is in the car, I would like to be able to ask the assistant to add a specific intermediate destination to the navigation plan.
Specific. As in, exactly what I asked for, and if there is not one in reasonable diversion distance, information to that affect. As in, if I ask for a credit union, do not send me to a bank. If I ask for a Wendy's®, do not send me to a Burger King® just because BK paid for placement this week. And if I ask for a Japanese restaurant, I do not want Thai food. And if there is no Japanese restaurant, just tell me there isn't. Don't make one up. And don't send me 60 miles out of the way, either.
And I do not want this to preempt my ultimate destination. I just need twenty bucks, a Frosty®, and some ramen. I have not bailed on wanting to see my niece this weekend.
This is such low-hanging fruit, and yet nobody has come up with a passable implementation so far.
Nobody wants to spontaneously buy a TV. Everyone spontaneously gets a craving for an ultraprocessed ice-milk beverage food product.
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Yeah I don't get it either, I already have an AI on my phone that can do all these things and I always have my phone with me. Everyone what's to put an AI in everything but I don't want to have deal with a bunch of different instances of AI. I'd want an Ironman/Jarvis type experience where the one AI instance follows me around (as long as that AI isn't some techno-dystopian big brother)
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
No ONE asked for this. These CEOs must go to some retreat with Google execs that orally please them. "AI AI AI AI AI, we are the corporate banditos!"
(unless there is a code to tell the AI, "Hugins, deploy anti-tailgating countermeasures" I am 100% against this and vote for OPT-IN only).
(unless there is a code to tell the AI, "Hugins, deploy anti-tailgating countermeasures" I am 100% against this and vote for OPT-IN only).
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Semi-ninja'd but I'll post this anyway:
Occasionally I spot 50-ish years old cars that still seem to work fine.
Will these Volvos hit the 50 year mark? LOL I'd be very surprised if they last beyond 10 as support will likely die there/then.
10+ year old secondhand value: zero. Ouch.
Another pain point: I doubt the people at Volvo haven't considered this stuff so it seems they believe their customers don't have brains....OMG thát's why they need AI!
Occasionally I spot 50-ish years old cars that still seem to work fine.
Will these Volvos hit the 50 year mark? LOL I'd be very surprised if they last beyond 10 as support will likely die there/then.
10+ year old secondhand value: zero. Ouch.
Another pain point: I doubt the people at Volvo haven't considered this stuff so it seems they believe their customers don't have brains....OMG thát's why they need AI!
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Those don't even seem like 'agent' questions; except in the weak sense that something that can kinda-read might be able to successfully regurgitate the answers.
Two of those are literally "print the number the sensor is already reporting; and the lower and upper bounds that are already being used to fret and present a near-useless binary indicator"; which seems like an exceptionally classical piece of UI design (though, admittedly, just abandoning UI design and pretending that forcing the user to RAG it out is progress is in vogue).
The other two are super lightweight search questions(unless someone has decided to simply not write the manual).
I'm not saying that you couldn't put that behind a full nondeterministic conversational speech UI thing; but there seems to be nothing there you couldn't have done in about 1995 for the 'search the manual' features and nothing you couldn't have done in about 1850 for the 'gauges shall point to numbered scales with minimum and maximum safe values on them' stuff.
Obviously automotive diagnostics as the vendor prefers them could just be replaced by a "talk to your dealer" light that comes on at intervals; but it's not like tire pressure or operating temperature are terribly different from fuel level; which did indeed get an informative UI, mostly without comment, back when in-car transistors were busy in the radio.
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Jesus Christ. I never need to give my car “vague directions“; I just enter my destination before I start driving. I never need to dick around with trying to find that perfect song; I just start a playlist or a podcast to listen to while I drive. And I can’t remember the last time I actually had to look at my car’s manual. None of the stuff this guy is talking about has any useful application for the average person.
Like copilot, this is another case of companies jumping on the AI bandwagon, and over-investing in something that the average person doesn’t actually need. Now they need to recoup their investment by somehow convincing us that we need it. But 99% of us don’t.
Just piss off with this AI garbage already.
Like copilot, this is another case of companies jumping on the AI bandwagon, and over-investing in something that the average person doesn’t actually need. Now they need to recoup their investment by somehow convincing us that we need it. But 99% of us don’t.
Just piss off with this AI garbage already.
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My wife was a relatively early adopter of the XC40 Recharge in 2022 and while it has been a generally good car and she enjoys it, the, I'll call it "operating system" leaves a fair bit to be desired. The user experience is akin to a buggy first-generation consumer device, which I suppose it is. Examples include the system routinely losing logins for entertainment services (e.g. Spotify) and not being able to reconnect to them without multiple reboots (first world problems) and flat-out losing cell connectivity which also can only be corrected with multiple reboots.
And... it's slow as heck upon startup.
So, I hope they've improved all this, otherwise it's tough to recommend these vehicles.
And... it's slow as heck upon startup.
So, I hope they've improved all this, otherwise it's tough to recommend these vehicles.
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I think this raises at least a couple of important points.
The car company representative came up with a very silly example scenario that should really never come up ("hmm... I am out driving but would like to suddenly and on a whim go and buy a 75" Samsung TV of the type XXX-75YYY... let me as the AI assistant"), yet they cannot look at how actual humans behave or what functionality would support that normal behaviour.
Even today, if we are navigating to somewhere and decide that we are hungry or need petrol then the bloody nav starts recalculating the route and directing us in silly ways. And adding a navpoint while driving is seriously hit-and-miss, and may, as the previous poster points out, send us somewhere else entirely.
In car navigation is fine so long as we can plan the route in advance, but rubbish when adding in stops while under way. The same goes for both Google maps and Apple maps. An AI assistant needs to focus on tasks that would actually help, not on misjudging whether a big TV would fit in the car (taking the dimensions of the TV without the packaging would be the first fun screwup).
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when they're talking Agentic AI, given the nature of the people behind this push (I'm looking at you rascal billionaire class), I think we're gonna end up[ with a world filled with those creepy people from Progressive Insurance commercials.
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Whilst I think Polestar and Volvo are no longer connected at all really, I am 100% with you on Cortana...
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For most cars in the UK, the spare t(yr)e is back in about 2010... Can of squirty foam is your lot.
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To me, this sounds like a request for a "Long Term Service" edition for cars. They're getting to be more and more parallel to software these days, and many software systems that have critical applications have a regular stream and a "long term service" stream that gets a lot less feature updates, but a very predictable and often extended schedule of security, safety, and bug fix updates. Maybe fewer touchscreens and more buttons?
I, for one, would much rather buy a LTS vehicle than a regular one. I'd much rather get one vehicle and stick with it for a decade or two. Even if it means fewer bells and whistles.
Now, while I second the comments about not wanting another trying-to-be agentic AI to serve my needs with regards to everything; I like the potential to have an agentic AI that is exclusively and stringely restricted and focused strictly on the vehicle and vehicle specific tasks. Being able to ask general questions that ought to be answered in the manual and do so with a 100% guaranteed 100% confidence rating? That sounds great.
For example, "Hey car, I just had a warning light turn on. Can you tell me what it means?" (car provides a quick explanation, and offers to provide a more in-depth explanation upon request)
"Is it something I need to stop for now, or can it wait until the end of the trip?" (car looks at my current route and uses that if I have one, or if not just provides a "that should be checked within the next however many km."
"OK, can you find an open garage or dealership that handles this car near my current route?"
That last one, and general "find an X (restaurant, gas station, hotel, etc) is probably the farthest I'd want a car AI to go in terms of talking to the internet. And it doesn't actually need that - most garmins, for instance, have what amounts to a phone book of travel oriented businesses and locations built in. Zero data about the places, just name and location. For a car with a larger data capacity, maybe also include a field for mechanics and garages and car dealerships identifying the confidence level with the car I'm in, ranging from "no info" to "says they specialize in them" to "certified by the manufacturer", carries OEM parts for this brand of car, etc.
I guess what I'm saying is that there's space to have a car AI, but it really should be very focused on being a digital copilot or navigator or captain's aide to the driver that provides in-depth specialized and extremely high confidence information and assitance regarding the car it is in. I'd much rather herar it go "That question's more of a general shopping question, so I'm going to pass if off to your phone's AI assistant. Just a minute please." when it gets something that isn't car relevant.
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Hard no. I don’t have a chatbot in my phone. I don’t have a chatbot in my computer. I sure as hell don’t want a f-ing chatbot in my car.
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Eh, I could get behind an electric vehicle that desires to swallow the sun. Seems like an implied interest in solar or fusion energy. Albeit a slightly threatening one.
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People are so caught up in their reactionary response to AI that they're missing some real implications here. Is this Volvo adding Gemini or is this Google adding Gemini to their Android Automotive platform? Will we start seeing Gemini popping up in other cars that have Android Automotive?
What about the connection to yesterday's post about Google adding personal data to Gemini search capabilities? Will this instance of Gemini be able to surface private emails in front of your family or kids, your coworkers?
I had a car with Android Automotive for a few months and this was actually one of my bigger concerns. You login to your personal Google account so it's basically putting all of your personal information front and center in the car, with seemingly no way to limit access, like if your coworkers were in the car for lunch.
What about the connection to yesterday's post about Google adding personal data to Gemini search capabilities? Will this instance of Gemini be able to surface private emails in front of your family or kids, your coworkers?
I had a car with Android Automotive for a few months and this was actually one of my bigger concerns. You login to your personal Google account so it's basically putting all of your personal information front and center in the car, with seemingly no way to limit access, like if your coworkers were in the car for lunch.
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Gosh, this must mean that Windows 11 won't be available in next-gen Volvos!
What a bummer, man!
What a bummer, man!
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To be fair, there are a bunch of spellings for Odin. Odin, Oden, Wodan, Wotan. And more. But best practice would be to keep whatever spelling you choose consistent throughout the article.
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I wanted a three-row PHEV and ended up getting an XC90 about a year ago. Overall, it’s a nice car but, based on my experience with the software, I won’t be getting another car built on Google Automotive, or a Volvo in particular, anytime soon.
Now that they’re harnessing the Transformative Power of AI, though, I may have to reconsider…
Now that they’re harnessing the Transformative Power of AI, though, I may have to reconsider…
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It is sad but inevitable - Volvo is becoming Geely. Particularly as EV transition is accelerated.
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Even before digital crap started encroaching, the vast majority of cars don’t last beyond 20 years, let alone 50.Semi-ninja'd but I'll post this anyway:
Occasionally I spot 50-ish years old cars that still seem to work fine.
Will these Volvos hit the 50 year mark? LOL I'd be very surprised if they last beyond 10 as support will likely die there/then.
10+ year old secondhand value: zero. Ouch.
Another pain point: I doubt the people at Volvo haven't considered this stuff so it seems they believe their customers don't have brains....OMG thát's why they need AI!
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