It won’t be trariffs that bring this company down. It will be the software developers. I’m saddened to say I agree with everything you’ve written. I’ve driven the car 1,000 miles now and still experience an odd mix of excitement to get it on the road and fear that once I’ve arrived at my destination it will lock me out. I’ve installed an Uber App on my phone right next to the Polestar App for just that contingency.

 

It sucks because everything but the software is fantastic and buttoned down. Problem is, the car relies on the software significantly.

Not sure why it's not possible to lower windows with the app, or flash the lights, or honk the horn on the Polestar 3.

 

I've not driven a P3 so can't really comment on the above experiences. What I can say is that I'm approaching two years ownership of my P2 and I've not experienced any of these or similar issues.

The only thing that has never worked on my P2 is the wireless phone charger but I really couldnt care less about that. Firstly, my phone battery easily lasts all day so I only ever charge it overnight anyway (ironically enough on a wireless charging pad!) and secondly should I ever needed to charge it in the car it's easy enough to use a cable anyway. In other words, it's no big deal. In all other respects the car 'just works'.

My question is how can the P3 be apparently so much worse than the P2? Shouldn't a designer/manufacturer be getting better at building cars as they get more experience? What is going wrong here?

 

I've not driven a P3 so can't really comment on the above experiences. What I can say is that I'm approaching two years ownership of my P2 and I've not experienced any of these or similar issues.

The only thing that has never worked on my P2 is the wireless phone charger but I really couldnt care less about that. Firstly, my phone battery easily lasts all day so I only ever charge it overnight anyway (ironically enough on a wireless charging pad!) and secondly should I ever needed to charge it in the car it's easy enough to use a cable anyway. In other words, it's no big deal. In all other respects the car 'just works'.

My question is how can the P3 be apparently so much worse than the P2? Shouldn't a designer/manufacturer be getting better at building cars as they get more experience? What is going wrong here?

P3 is built on Volvo's new "core-compute" software. which also powers the EX90 and ES90.

The idea is that this software will be the one they use for all Volvo's going forward. believe it or not.

Whether or not Polestar will be in the same boat has yet to be revealed. but if the P7 is built on the SPA3 platform. then my guess is yes.

 

I'm in the US and will wait until reports come in here from US built units to pass judgement on Polestar. I am purposely not buying a launch edition for the reasons mentioned above. I bought the first year Acura TLX (2015) and had multiple shifting problems with the 8-speed dual clutch automatic transmission. Either experience lack of power on take off or a sudden fear that you have been rear ended when slowing down, as the transmission attempts to downshift. At least the polestar is well built. The software seems to be the main culprit here, and can be addressed with enough pressure from consumers. I am afraid I cannot say the same for the other brand mentioned in the post. I don't think great software is going to help you as you watch your rear bumper fall off in the rain, front trim blow off as you drive, or experience the panoramic roof fly away (Yes, all verified cases for Tesla). I'm also not sure what Volvo 's factory safety ratings are, but the Tesla factory down thew road from me has had more than their share of line workers getting legs crushed and receiving severe burns in factory fires.

 

At least the polestar is well built. The software seems to be the main culprit here, and can be addressed with enough pressure from consumers.

believe it or not - releasing unfinished software appears to be part of the strategy these days. IOW - if the OEM waits until the software is ready they will miss the market. So, releasing it now - and fixing it later - is just where almost everybody seems to be these days.

My understanding is that this is based upon Chinese (automobile) philosophy. lol.

 

Yes, it’s frustrating. The software is holding back the P3, and frankly hurting its reputation, and thus the Polestar brand. They really must put effort into stabilizing the software.

mines been in the shop for over a week waiting for an assessment about the charger; calling today to check in. I’m sure they’ll say they have not gotten to it yet. Also, based on what I’ve read, I do not believe that simply reinstalling the same software version will help, because it’s the current version that’s the problem. I think all these P3s just need to sit tight until a new, stable, reliable version is available.

I’d love to get out of the lease and move on but I have no doubt that would be an impossible task, requiring too much effort and time. But if my car’s in the shop for much longer I’m going to press for some sort of compensation, since I’m making lease payments for a car that isn't drivable.

 

The service center has appealed to Polestar to replace the onboard charging unit.

 

Agree with this all 100%. Won't be having another one or even a Volvo unless they pull their proverbial fingers out.

 

Please contact Polestar corporate and let them know. My local dealer acts like I'm a weirdo for having any issues at all.

 

I felt similarly for a few weeks, pretty much the whole month of March, but recently for me, the car is functioning as designed and I love it. I had all kinds of problems with digital key but that is finally working 90+% of the time. I put one of those little credit card holders on my phone and carry a key card on that. I look forward to the day I can ditch the card. My service center in Washington DC has been great, very responsive and proactive. One of my most frustrating issues was intermittent turn signal failure, which was fixed by replacement of some component within the steering system.

 

I keep the credit card key in my wallet as a backup. I never had a problem with the digital key until a few days before it went in for service.

 

I will not get another Volvo or Polestar, the customer service in the UK is awful, my car as been stuck at a Volvo service centre for over four weeks, still waiting for the OBC replacement. I get no updates and they are unable to give me an estimated time for when the car will fixed and returned to me. As my car is a company car I have now left this with the lease provider. If your looking for good support look elsewhere.

 

Just for a bit of balance, everything with my Polestar 3 works perfectly.

(actually memory seats don’t work, but I can live with that until they sort with a software upgrade.)

 

I'm feeling the need to defend both the car and agile development...

Agile is a far superior development methodology to the old 'Requirements > Design > Build > Test' option which in today's fast moving environment just means that by the time you get requirements signed off the world has moved on and they are no longer valid. Or worse, you stick with the old requirements and by the time it's ready for production it's useless and you've wasted a ton of money for something that's long out of date. For those complaining of half baked products and technical debt - you didn't do it right. The point of agile is just to build something iteratively so you can get feedback as you go along, adjust your approach so when you get to the end it's much closer to what you need instead of what you thought you wanted at the beginning when you didn't know anything. If it's launched half baked I can guarantee you that it was not the dev team's fault, it was management.

As for the car, I've been very lucky perhaps but I'm not the only one. Very few problems and those that I encountered were not particularly bothersome. I am definitely an easier use case (for example, one driver so no profile issues) but I suspect that my expectations for some of the technology are perhaps what makes my experience with the car better. Going through the list from the OP (which seems like he's had every problem):

• no alarm issues
• only one profile so no issues there for me
• seat memory (autosave) works as designed but it's only a good design if the profiles are bulletproof which they don't appear to be
• no issues with lock/unlock ever - digital key, fob or keycard, but again, one profile and I haven't shared the key so cannot comment on that feature. Not sure I understand the complaint about the keycard. It's an NFC key that will always work and is not reliant on battery power. Seems like a good idea. I keep one in my wallet just in case but since my iPhone will also work like this (as a backup NFC key even if the battery is dead), it's not really necessary.
• Do I think the approach fob with no buttons that might die permanently if you don't charge it every two weeks is ridiculous? Absolutely but I never use it and I knew about it when I bought the car so complaining about it just seems like I'm complaining about a decision I made. I've also heard that it was an afterthought because the car was designed for digital key only (with the keycard as a failsafe backup). It was the delay in getting the digital key working that had them rush something 'cheap' out (or something like that).
• As for 'no more opening all the windows on a hot day as you approach', I think the idea was that you would pre-condition the car via the app so the open windows on approach really wouldn't be necessary.
• I also don't understand the massive complaints around, for example, doesn't auto lock when I walk away. Really/ This is the thing people want to ditch their $100k car for? I still think the best design is the one that's been on most cars for the past 20 years. You walk up to the car with the 'key' in your pocket and when you touch the door handle it opens, and not before. When you are leaving the car you touch the button on the handle and the car locks (and it works fine on the P3). No question about when or if the car is locked in either instance.
• Autofold mirrors. OK, I get that this should be insanely easy to program and it was promised so just get it done. Personally, I'm lucky that my use case doesn't require this so it doesn't bother me but I get that for a lot of people this is a major annoyance.
• I don't have any idea what 'The approach and park lighting turns on even when it’s switched off' means. Exterior lights can only be switched off when the car is in Park. The default is Auto On and the car resets to that every time. Which is probably good as there is no way to tell from inside the car if the exterior lights are on so if it let you turn them off in anything other than Park then you would probably be driving with them off when you shouldn't.
• The stereo does not forget when it was on or off - it's designed to be paused whenever you start the car. You may not agree with that design decision but that's not a fault.
• I've never had any beeping associated with the Road Sign Info - wondering what that might be...
• Never had an issue with the distraction system - i.e. if it yelled at me I was in fact spending too much time looking at the screen...nevertheless, I hate these driver assist systems and have them all turned off (except the road sign info). I don't think in general that they are ready for primetime and just tend to lull people into a less alert state than they should be when driving a car. Since I don't like them and didn't expect them to work well, I'm not disappointed by the fact they aren't perfect.

To summarize:

• There are definitely way more hardware and software issues than there should be - even accounting for it being a new vehicle. I do feel that cars built on the Google Automotive stack seem to be more problematic but in general, car companies don't seem to be very good at software. Given the new prevalence of software to the overall design and safety of a vehicle, they better get their collective asses in gear or we are in serious trouble.
• Customer support is problematic with the level of knowledge and availability of support in some cases very inconsistent
• My experience with the car has been good but that is down to (a) my expectations were realistic and (b) I haven't experienced any of the major problems that many have
• There are probably lots more folks in my position but most would not be posting here as they wouldn't have much reason to even visit...

I do feel I need to add that comments across multiple threads are clear that people are not happy with design decisions (separate from bugs/defects) made by Polestar and they are expecting Polestar to update the car via software to meet their expectations. It used to be that you test drove a car and if you liked how it drove and operated (or at least could live with it) you bought it and that was that. No changes expected. We now seem to be conditioned by our myriad devices to expect that things will be updated over time, preferably for the better, but maybe not. Perhaps something that changes will work better for you but worse for someone else who was happy with what they bought and are now upset it doesn't work that way anymore. Ultimately, I think people need to take more responsibility for their purchasing decisions - take more time on the test drive, have the salesperson walk them through all features and make sure you can live with how it works. Everyone will be happier for it...

 

I'm feeling the need to defend both the car and agile development...

Agile is a far superior development methodology to the old 'Requirements > Design > Build > Test' option which in today's fast moving environment just means that by the time you get requirements signed off the world has moved on and they are no longer valid. Or worse, you stick with the old requirements and by the time it's ready for production it's useless and you've wasted a ton of money for something that's long out of date. For those complaining of half baked products and technical debt - you didn't do it right. The point of agile is just to build something iteratively so you can get feedback as you go along, adjust your approach so when you get to the end it's much closer to what you need instead of what you thought you wanted at the beginning when you didn't know anything. If it's launched half baked I can guarantee you that it was not the dev team's fault, it was management.

Yes, that's the Agile Kool-Aid.

It's not that the fast moving world made the original method obsolete, it's that people cough*senior corporate leadership*cough were looking for a shortcut to that. Agile is a shortcut that never actually delivers anything, because it's always in development, always iterating....but without proper documentation, because that "wastes" time.

"The point of agile is just to build something iteratively so you can get feedback as you go along, adjust your approach so when you get to the end"

That's brochure level double speak for "half-baked". What in the hell is a half-baked product, if not a product that's built (software or hardware), delivered, and then....iterated based on end user feedback? And the end? There is no end, because it's an endless feedback loop.

There's absolutely a place for user feedback and iteration within product development and progression. But Agile threw the baby out with the bathwater in an attempt to cut out a key element of development.

There's a reason Agile has slowly fallen out of favor, and isn't the hot C-suite talking point it was just 5 years ago.

 

This is not the difference between agile and waterfall software. You can have minimally viable releases in both models which seems to be the focus of the argument above. In the end you still have to do the same level of test coverage.

You can also have iteratIve development that is different from either of the two models but can incorporate parts of each as needed. But IMHO pure agile is crap and can’t be used for anything complex. If your building toy websites then I suppose availed is fine, but that’s it. Also pure waterfall is pretty rare these days so a comparing agile with waterfall is not a good comparison; today its probably iterative development that isn’t norm in a well,run software organization.

Finally the whole term agile is useless and a buzz word that I though would have died by now but is branched so far out of software design into any project done by teams in any industry that it’s often an excuse to to more with less faster.

The one thing you do want to do when developing software is test early and often and find bugs as close to development as opposed to late in a cycle. The best way to do that is with an iterative model while QA as part the engineering team and integrated in with the engineers at an individual contributor level. This falls outside of being waterfall or agile, and is solely an organizational issue. Worse is that often with agile companies throw crappy untested software to customers under the assumption you can just fix it fast and give the customer a new release. Customers are not suppose to be testers.

 

Customers are not suppose to be testers.

Indeed, but if they treated as such how about some big discounts in recognition of their contribution?!

 

Agile doesn't mean you deliver something half baked but it might mean you don't try to deliver everything all at once.

Again, that's by definition "half-baked". You are not delivering a complete product. Whether that happens to be okay or not isn't what defines it as half-baked. APM is by design about speed, which I think we agree. And it's speed ahead of completeness and ahead of customer satisfaction because you put the testing and research portion onto the end user/customer and hope for the best, and if you fall flat you hope to iterate out of the hole you dug.

We've been building a light rail line here in Toronto that's 5 years late and way over budget. That's waterfall.

That's just old school poor management. Those rail networks you're talking about in Europe and Asia were built, in segments, long before APM existed. (TGV is a great example)

Since this topic is supposed to be about cars, what about agile for cars? In my mind that means you build the core features you can't live without, roll the car out and then keep adding features. What we got with the P3 feels more like waterfall

Gonna cut that sentence right there. Earlier, I said that the P3 was a case study on the failure of APM when expanded beyond simple software. I didn't say that flippantly. It's been well reported about the failure of APM within Volvo and some of the higher profile hirings and firings that resulted. The P3 and EX90 delays were directly related to APM. The slow rollout of functions and features? Also APM, in part because of the APM driven decision to go with the Xavier chipset for production speed...and then 'iterate' up to Orin later.

Volvo ville slå Tesla med EX90: ”Vi varnade dem” | Carup.se

Köparna kommer få ta emot en ofärdig version av Volvos flaggskepp EX90. Carup kan nu avslöja de stora IT-problemen som försenat Volvos prestigeprojekt och som kostar miljarder. Toppcheferna på Volvo ville överträffa Tesla med ”Core Computer” och lidar – trots att ingen på Volvo hade erfarenhet...

carup.se

So now, after you read that, and see the absolute havoc that APM caused, your following comment seems supremely out of touch when virtually every post in this forum and on the EX90 forums is made up of people complaining about the net results of APM, which you're trying to sell as somehow a benefit.

Guaranteed that agile will always deliver better against user needs (not wants) and faster vs waterfall approaches. BTW, you talk about agile never delivering anything and always iterating. The first part of the sentence is completely false but the second is absolutely true. For most useful products there will always be a backlog. The difference between agile and waterfall is how you prioritize and get the most important things out the door. Slowly via waterfall or quickly via agile. I think I read somewhere that Google was pushing updates out every few minutes - that is definitely agile...

 

Volvo ville slå Tesla med EX90: ”Vi varnade dem” | Carup.se

Köparna kommer få ta emot en ofärdig version av Volvos flaggskepp EX90. Carup kan nu avslöja de stora IT-problemen som försenat Volvos prestigeprojekt och som kostar miljarder. Toppcheferna på Volvo ville överträffa Tesla med ”Core Computer” och lidar – trots att ingen på Volvo hade erfarenhet...

carup.se

Really interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I'll note that Google translate may impact my understanding of the reporting...

Early on it talks about Anders Bell coming in from Tesla. 'He immediately abolished the agile working method and reintroduced requirements for technical competence among managers. The old project management method with fixed goals was withdrawn.' I'm not sure what that last sentence really means and I now have no idea what approach they ended up actually using. Anybody know?

My second thought is that the problems Volvo (and by extension Polestar) faced had less to do with development methodology and more to do with really bad management decisions. I did project management for almost 20 years (plus another 10 participating) and can definitely sympathize with the idea that management can come into a project with very fixed ideas on what they want and how they want to get there instead of providing a vision and letting the team that actually knows what's going on figure out how to get there.

I'm going to try to rephrase what I've been saying about a monolithic vs iterative approach focusing just on some safety systems for a simple example without getting bogged down talking about the 75 other features (e.g. Homelink) that didn't get delivered.

• Starting point = Volvo car with three point seatbelts, airbags and crumple zones.
• End point = starting point + advanced sensors, AI based attention and occupancy detection, AI based driver assistance systems (lane keeping, pilot assist, etc), Core Computing approach

Per the article, staff says - bad idea, we don't actually have the competence to do this nor the time to develop this competence in time to deliver the car when you want it. Management says do it anyway.

The Starting Point car was NOT delivered with all of its safety features all at once. Those were delivered over time. The car without airbags was not a half baked product, it was simply a product that made sense at the time given the various constraints and the technology and budget available.

The only point I have been trying to make is that the P3 and the EX90 did not need to be delivered with all of the End Point features to be a great car (or a viable one from a sales perspective). Delivering stuff that doesn't work isn't inherent in any particular methodology, that's just a dumb management decision. I'm sure they felt it was necessary because they had already broken the cardinal rule in development that you don't tell people you are delivering feature X on date Y unless you know you can actually do that - and they clearly knew they could not.

What's not clear from the article is whether it was moving to the Core Computing model that meant they couldn't figure out how to deliver basic functionality either (like a working radio or the ability to consistently make phone calls like every other car for the last 20 years). It certainly seems that way from the results. That said, I still find it strange how much variation there is in the stability and functionality of the delivered cars given they are largely identical.

 

Lesson to be learned here folks is to never get a first year (or even a 2nd year at times) new model vehicle.

 

Makes sense to me. My MY24 P2 doesn't seem to have any of the issues often discussed on here. Only thing that doesn't work is the wireless phone charger - hardly a big deal.

 

Volvo never worked Agile. They implemented SAFe which many thinks is the opposite of Agile. It is what happens when suits and management hijack Agile.
Volvo failed in all the points from the original Agile Manifesto, hence they were not Agile.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

The failure of Polestar 3 (and EX90) is because it launched too early. It was even launched with inadequate hardware that they will replace for free for all, so that a good car can be had. The status of cars was/is known, I don't think anything reported in here was not known beforehand by Volvo. This is not Agile, it is just bad management decision to release a car with the status it had.
They knew the problems for a long time, but changing this kind of hardware is a huge task so it was postponed in the hope that the original hardware would function after all. The project was already years in development when deciding to switch. A switch that in some parts of the project mean a reboot and going back to square zero.
They know that many of the software fixes have to wait for the introduction of the new computer. Some things are just bad user interaction though, like how to operate Pilot Assist, and that might never be fixed.
Also, I think that SAFe has now been scrapped, but not sure.

 

Literally addressed in the Carup article. Mats Moberg was hired to accelerate the SPA2 development, and to do it by implementing APM. He did....and then things got worse in every possible way, to the point that he was fired. SAFe is literally APM, it's "Scaled Agile Framework (for enterprise)". It's an attempt to APM all the things.

And again, people need to step back from the APM Kool-Aid, and recognize what they're saying. When you say:

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

What that means in real life is, "Push the product to the end user/costumer and see what sticks". It means you shortcut the testing phase and put that on the end user, gambling that you got it right on the first pass, but if not that you'll iterate. Again, as others have mentioned, that's perfectly fine if you're developing something small, or for a niche user base. It's a frickin disaster if you scale that up to an entire vehicle, soup to nuts.

 

I think I read somewhere that Google was pushing updates out every few minutes - that is definitely agile...

bug fixes. lol.

The best way to do that is with an iterative model while QA as part the engineering team and integrated in with the engineers at an individual contributor level. This falls outside of being waterfall or agile, and is solely an organizational issue.

agree with "organizational issue". it's all about the software development team - emphasis on team. for sure the highest quality software I was ever part of came out of a team with zero QA. imo, good management is good teamwork. and a good team takes responsibility for their own software - and no "tossing it over the wall to QA".

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

this looks pretty good to me. it's more about the individuals involved - imo - and less about the methodology. edit: although, there is simply no substitute for good design. up front.

 

To try and wrap this up, I like to relate project management to food.

APM if implemented in creating a meal is great to do within your own home. You make something, and if your family doesn't like it, you adjust (iterate) for the next meal. It's small scale, small cost, and your family isn't going to rake you over the coals for the occasional culinary misadventure.

APM implemented on a large restaurant scale...would mean meals constantly coming back, having to redo them (iterate) and send them back out. The result is high cost, larger scale, and potentially bad reviews that ultimately tank your restaurant. Or worse, you give people food illnesses, because...speed over proper process.

That's why chefs experiment, but they do things internally before pushing out to paying customers, and they follow explicitly processes to get a safe and positive result.

People (c-suite) are in such a race to be the first mover on things that they look for any and all shortcuts to get there, even at the expense of the customer. To keep it within the culinary example, they're looking for how many shortcuts can be had before the customer has had enough with sending the plate back or just how much diarrhea is too much before they stop coming to restaurant.

 

To try and wrap this up..

the actual tragedy is that the P3 software represents all new Volvo's going forward. oh f**k. and quite possibly all new Polestar's as well.

 

You're not wrong. Every single thing you mention are issues i've experienced as well. However, these issues don't appear every time I drive the car. I would say i experience perhaps one or two of these issues about 10% of the time i drive the car. For me, the refined driving experience, the power, the quiet, the non-rattling (have you actually ridden in a Tesla that's been on the road for more than 6 months? ....EVERYTHING rattles). Yes, the electronics have issues. But they are steadily being addressed with every software release. Don't give up on Polestar. They'll get there. ...and for what it's worth...my wife is in complete agreement with you.

 

New P3 owner here and also pretty frustrated. The summary is as mentioned- beautiful car that drives great- handicapped by awful software and UI. I get that Volvo/Polestar want safety to be a flagship brand philosophy but the number of alerts and warning tones is absolutely maddening. Good luck listening to the radio. I’d really love to have a master kill switch for all of that noise. As mentioned, the seat positioning never remembering, profiles not saving, weirdest unreliable keyless system in any modern vehicle. The phone key is hit and miss and that walk away and approach lock and unlock wasn’t fully tested is kind of a mind blow with a car this expensive.

 

oh boy, where do I start...
My Car Experience:
Mechanically, the car is awesome, and I know what im getting into with early adoption of unusual cars. My wife has a Honda for a reason; it just works, and is boring as hell. and that is a good thing. I do not expect that this the Launch edition of the PS3. But... the car was un availible to me for about 3 weeks becasue the 12volt battery was not getting charged, and I got back from a trip, and the car would NOT do ANYTHING. I tried to jump it using the external jumper port and that was enough to open the door (but not close it, it wouldn't latch closed). the jumper I was using was low on power, and couldn't get the car moving. Two days later I went back, disconnected the 12volt to "reset" it, had a better jumper, and I got it to start. enought to drive it up on the tow truck bed. There we errors... basically the Battery control module failed, the 12 volt system wouldn't charge, and without 12V, doors, lights, computer... didn't work. It also affected other things that I didn't notice. The control module was replaced, and now that I've had it back, everything is working 100%
Was I happy? No. is it a bad designof the battery control module, or did i get a bad one? I don't know, and might never know, and I can live with that.
Software, in this car is... not my favorite. and not just because of the bugs. The bugs are aggrivating, and there is a lack of communication of what is being worked on that I think we would all like to know, and I don't know how to fix that other than I bother the people on the chat about it a lot. maybe that will improve.
But my BIGGEST issue with the software is; I just wouldn't have done things the way they have. both from a functionality/usability point of view nor from a priority of release. Which kinda brings me to the next topic:
AGILE development or in this case maybe MAHD: if they are "following" agile, then what "user story" said they wanted the google assistant button on the main screen, or the one pedal drive adjustment? what about the seat adjustment button that when you push it, it still does the same thing is does if you hadedn't pushed it, and have to push it again to change modes? And from a Systems integration, what user story wanted a friken software button on the screen to open the glove box?!?! you know, the screen that wasn't working when my 12volt battery died. I don't think my User Story would have ended up with the software this car has. I really wish I could show the software team what I would change to make it more usable and safer to use; I want to give them my user story.
AGILE vs Waterfall development: I've been in mechanical engineering for 35 years, and I have never heard of "waterfall" process untill the software people started talking about AGILE. more importantly, I have never seen a waterfall project EVER! I've never even a part of a "throw it over the wall" project. Never. There are only two type of projects: Well run, and Poorly run. AGILE is just the latest buzz word to confuse people, and it always ends up that people see what that latest new process "doesn't need to do", but are blind to the second half of that which is "do this instead". I've see it over and over again.
Every one of my project I've been on and run have been: AGILE, Lean, Just in Time, Q1, and, Concurent Engineered. Successful project always have a few things in common: A clear direction, some one to remove "road blocks", and flexibility to chage when you learn new things. and one last thing: develop with the technology we have, not the technology we hope to have.
There is a lot of talk about "more speed and less requirements". wrong. we are trying to get people to use "velocity", which is speed AND direction.

If your previous process sucked, AGILE might help, but if you already have a good process, then AGILE is a horrible distraction, is ineffectual, and ampify all the problems that exist.

My personal experiences, yours might differ,

 

And from a Systems integration, what user story wanted a friken software button on the screen to open the glove box?!?! you know, the screen that wasn't working when my 12volt battery died.

I believe they saw this as a progression on the XC90. It also has no physical handle ont he glovebox itself and instead uses a hardware button under the infotainment screen to electronically release the glovebox.

 

Had mine for about a month & 1000 miles here in the US. While I've had occasional software issues, they are neither constant nor above the level of minor annoyances. Coming from 2 Teslas (>100k miles over 7 years), I can say that the era of the "software defined car" comes with significant downsides, but I'm enjoying the upsides more. If you are one to expect few to no issues with an expensive purchase (and I don't blame you), then these are trying times. If Tesla is the benchmark for vehicle SW and you haven't owned one, I can say that they may be tops in both number of issues and the speed with which they are fixed. For me, the second part is way more important than the first. Let's hope Polestar aspires to circa 2020 Tesla level SW agility.

 

Don't get me started on the Methodology wars. When you have been in the industry long enough you have seen them come and go. You have also seen good people/departments sacked because they were not the cool new guys. We spent Millions on these fads and not a single one delivered us to the promised land. In fact, they were distractions that slowed down project delivery.

At the end of the day, what was the desired outcome....deliver a functioning car. Requirements have not really changed in the past 10+yrs. I have had Homelink in a car for as long as I can remember. Preset Memory for seats, not rocket science. Having the tailgate open to a set point (after set)...again, not rocket science. How about having the freaking Microphone working 100% of the time when you sell a vehicle based on Google Automotive.

And... Flaws in the Safety systems, Press reverse, then drive, and the reverse...and you don't get a rear view. Or, the sensors going off-line without any warning or errors. Or...the opposite, lots of warnings about things that just go away.

I don't care what software development Methodology you use... Pushing out a half baked product is not a success.

 

Echo the OP. By now I’ve posted my issues enough. Car is in service for steering wheel replace/repair (2nd time), the 4th time for win noise and cabin whistle. The 3rd time for sensor and other failures (this time drive performance) and of course I have and have all the issues others reported.

car drives very well. Much more fun than the etron and inside much better space. But never know if it will break or not. And with that level of reliability and PSUK customer services…. 🙁🤯

 

I've deleted my comments here as they were specific to the P2.

 

As the original author, I'm weirdly happy to see I’m not the only one experiencing these issues it might actually add some weight to Polestar stepping up and fixing them.
That said, I do disagree with the idea that this is just "the new norm" as we move towards software based infotainment and driver-assist tech. Polestar (Volvo/Geely) didn’t just throw this range together overnight, these cars have been in the works for years, with proper planning. The electronics weren’t some last-minute “oh no, we forgot” addition.
Most of the features we’re all having problems with aren’t exactly new tech either. My old XC90 had nearly all of the same systems minus the Apple key cards and it worked brilliantly. So, this isn't some mind-blowingly new engineering challenge.
What should really concern Polestar is customer satisfaction. If they can’t win over buyers who’ve taken a chance on a new(ish) EV brand, they’re in serious trouble. The new wave of Chinese EVs actually look good now a far cry from the stuff they used to churn out and with many western designers on board, the tech looks slick and may just work as it should.
I genuinely like the P3 and the whole Polestar range, but unless they can win over the masses, they risk becoming the next Fisker leaving early adopters stuck with cars that’ll plummet in value practically overnight.

 

If you didn't already, I highly recommend you read that Carup article I shared earlier. It sums up the fundamental issues behind the development of the P3 and EX90.

Your old XC90 isn't a core-computing car. That's the fundamental underlying difference that is really at the heart of all of these issues. Your XC90 used tons of independent CPUs and modules and a boatload of wiring to do all of the different functions. The bad part of that is that modules and wiring cost money and add production complexity. The good part is that just about every function has a discrete module to control it. Mirror control? There's a computer module for that. Window control? There's a computer module for that. And on and on and on. Oh, and each one of those uses some sort of proprietary software made by the subcontractor that Volvo has to build around to interface with.

Core computing is meant to reduce, and ultimately eliminate that, by running everything through as few CPUs as possible, with software written by the manufacturer (Volvo in this case).

If they can get it right, it means they save a ton on production costs, and they also have more flexibility in how they integrate the onboard systems, which has the potential to create a much better and more dynamic user experience. They're clearly not there yet, and right now a massive bottleneck is the underpowered NVIDIA Xavier processor that is the core computer on the P3.