Nothing secret here… I’m just a sales guy so I try to keep up with all this stuff. Lots of guessing mixed with observations of the timeline.
Leading up to the shutdown of 3g Volvo was working to get a solution. Yep, it was known for years this was coming. What wasn’t known was that there would be a huge chip shortage right before this happened.
The P3 cars are the generation of most Volvo models before your XC90, which is a SPA car. The 2016 XC90 was the only SPA car to get a 3G modem. So MOST of the cars affects are the older platform cars, which are referred to as P3 (S60 (until 19), XC70, XC60 (until 18), S80. Actually, we see so few previous generation XC90s… I don’t think they had the modem ever… but I could be wrong. They were P2 platform cars/dinosaurs.
Anyhow… My guess is Volvo didn’t have the hardware to do the actual testing with. So they did the software design based on what they knew the hardware would be. They were a few weeks late, but managed to get the P3 modems out with new software… but it was quickly found the new software didn’t communicate. IDK what happened here. I think they were genuinely trying to get it out as quick as possible and with the chip shortages they shipped as soon as available without testing. Seems amateurish but I’m not sure how else it could be explained. It was found that the hardware WOULD connect though with the old software version… so Volvo would, on somewhat special request, let folks buy the new modem but with the understanding they would need to come back in to have a 2nd software fix. From reading on this forum, some dealers refused to offer this (it is extra work with no extra pay to do the software a 2nd time).
However, none of that happened with the XC90. I don’t know the reasoning there. But I suspect, when the P3 cars failed, they stopped pushing to get modems for the SPA cars. I suspect they put all their chip production towards making new cars… and even there they haven’t at all been able to keep up. I think with the AAOS challenges they’ve faced, it’s likely, and even reasonable, to say they would have put all efforts towards getting those cars working properly.
So I think that Volvo assumed they had a solution prior to the end of 3g… only they were waiting on hardware. But then the hardware came and it was found the software solution wasn’t working. So they’ve only had the opportunity to know they had a problem since February, since they thought they had it worked out.
From a business perspective… most XC90s affects are not owned by their first owners at this point. The problem with the 3g modem is real as I’ve said, but it absolutely is honestly a very unimportant problem. I’d bet most ’16 owners were not paying for the subscription portion. Most XC90s aren’t stolen, so tracking isn’t a big issue. And again, the value of the SOS is extremally limited. It’s even more limited than I mentioned before.
Further, mush of the new car problems deal with telematics and connection too.. so again from a triage perspective even if you think SOS is ultra important, then you’d be hard pressed to say it’s more important on a few cars from 5+ years ago compared to over half the cars in production today.
