With the launch of Sensus Connect, Volvo Car Group (Volvo Cars) reveals an updated on-board infotainment and navigation solution. Now, Volvo Cars truly offers customers a fully connected experience. The cloud-based services allow drivers to discover new restaurants at their destination, stream their favourite music seamlessly and much more.
The launch of cloud-enabled connected car services across the Volvo product portfolio is the latest proof-point of the visionary partnership between Volvo Car Group and Ericsson. Leveraging extensive consumer research and industry-leading innovation, the all-Swedish partnership has focused on developing a solution that supports current and future connected car needs by combining Volvo Cars’ driver behaviour expertise and Ericsson’s consulting and systems integration know-how.
“Technology should make your life easier. That’s why we listened carefully to our customers when creating Sensus Connect. It’s not about offering a thousand apps; it’s about giving you precisely what you need, before you even knew you needed it,” says David Holecek, Connectivity Brand Manager at Volvo Cars.
The brand new in-car experience includes a novel take on all aspects of travelling. Tens of thousands of radio stations can now be enjoyed in the car and the new navigation system allows the driver to set destinations through their mobile device and home computer.
Volvo Cars is one of few car manufacturers that strategically invests and partners in cloud-based solutions. The Volvo solution offers a branded look and feel and the possibility to remotely update content over air and time.
“It’s all about giving everyone an enjoyable, easy to use and intuitive experience. There is no point in filling a car with technology if it comes off as overwhelming, so our main focus is always to give our customers the best experience available and make it easy to digest. Our cloud-based apps update seamlessly. Sensus offers the optimal combination of input/output methods and allows the driver to turn the entire car into a Wi-Fi hotspot for all of their connected devices,” David Holecek says.
Research conducted by Machina Research concluded that annual revenue from Connect Car technology will increase five-fold in the next seven years to approximately 155 billion EUR, representing a huge opportunity to offer customers new features.
Volvo’s own connectivity roadmap started back in 2001 with the launch of Volvo On Call, and new Sensus Connect become the new connectivity base which will carry over Volvo’s new vehicle platform, SPA (Scalable Product Architecture).
Connectivity to the cloud is through the customer’s smart-phone, connected via Bluetooth with internet sharing enabled. If the customer has specified the Volvo On Call option, a SIM-card can be installed in the vehicle which uses the antenna on the vehicle which gives a better signal than through a phone.
Sensus Connect Enhancements
Specifying Sensus Connect upgrades the standard 5” HMI (Human Machine Interface) screen to the 7” screen.
The system can also be upgraded with Sensus Navigation with turn-by-turn navigation and 3D mapping. With the navigation system, the customer will also receive free life-time map updates.
The HMI screen itself has received a number of updates with better graphics and is now more intuitive. Details have been refined, even down to the matching of the screen graphics colour to the theme chosen on the driver’s TFT driver display.
The multimedia system now allows for customer to download music straight from a CD or USB, into the hard drive of the infotainment system.
The Bluetooth telephone system has been further enhanced with the possibility for the reading out of text messages received.
Sensus Connect Apps
The Next Step in Volvo’s Connectivity
The next stage in Volvo’s connectivity journey will be new functionality due to be released in the middle of 2014. An update to Sensus Connect will see a number of new features/apps available, to include:
ENTERTAINMENT
NAVIGATION
INTERFACE
CONNECTIVITY
SERVICES
