YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Rowan

lines on the record: 76
first: 2023-11-14
most recent: 2023-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think what you'll see is younger demographic want a smaller car, they don't have kids, don't have dogs, they don't have the same lifestyle needs of a big car. So the EX30, which we did a small issue, it's still an SUV, but it's the smallest SUV we've ever done. The demand for that car and the pre-orders for that car are super higher than we actually set ourselves the target and we've overshot that target. And I think that's a great city car. So I think you're going to see people who are in the city drive, certainly younger demographic as well. It's more affordable, it's smaller, it suits their lifestyle. Then I think you're going to see a lot more smaller SUVs in the cities, even in the USA. And then outside of the cities, I still think you're going to see the demand for bigger cars. And so for us, the EX30, we have the 40, we have right now the XC60, and we have the 90. We can cover all of that spectrum right now. I do agree that I think smaller cars, especially in the SUV format,”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think it's a viable strategy. I think we're going to stick to what we're really good at, and that is building really good, safe cars with fantastic connectivity experience for customers that allows them to enjoy the benefits. When we get to full AD of whatever they want to do with that time that they've gained.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're not saying we're going to do Netflix in the car and we're going to take a rev share of the ads that people show Netflix. I have heard this plan from other car makers. We're going to fill the car with screens. There's a movie theater on wheels and then we'll have the same business model as a TV network inside the car.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go think about fixing that the societal benefits, the benefits to the customer, and the benefits to the machine itself will all be helped by that data that we can get access to through the camera set.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why we do our own software. We don't want to rely on other people's software that is telling us what they think the camera sees. We want to make sure that we understand the software at the base code level so that we can continue to learn from it. The other thing is you get the data. If you use somebody else's software for that, for ADS, you get no data. So we'll get the data. We'll have a million cars, two million cars, three million cars sucking in data and saying this is how we can make the car even safer or the performance better and also the societal benefits. When you've got a car that's got eight cameras and a lidar system, we'll be able to see where there's a pothole in the road. We'll be able to see if there's a broken stop sign. We'll be able to see if a crosswalk's not being painted properly. We'll be able to pick up those geo coordinates and we'll be able to send it to the local council and say, hey, listen, there's a big pothole right in the middle of this road that could cause an accident or there's a stop sign right outside of school that's been broken. You know, you guys.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Full self-driving, they'll roll out city by city, actually state by state in the USA, and it'll roll out even then, in my opinion, this is at least my opinion, so it's a sample size of one, but it will start to roll out on known routes. So if you imagines downtown San Francisco to SFO on a certain route, full self-drive. You see that kind of pretty much already. Highway driving will be now. And that will happen in some countries much, much quicker than others. It'll happen in some states much quicker than others. Legislation will govern it state by state, country by country, region by region. But driving in the cities where you've got schools and kids and bikes and dogs, that's going to take much, much longer, in my opinion.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The relationship between us and their customers. And if there's subscription, if there's software subscription choices that does the same thing, we would of course go in that direction.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know we're looking at that right now. I'm not relying on that in terms of a revenue stream for us. I think you got to look at the underlying fundamentals of the business and say, can we have a profitable business based on this? Then maybe some revenue streams that come in in the future, but I'm not relying on those revenue streams to build a profitable business. Where I do think there is much more opportunity is in those external services where it's really clear. If you want your car cleaned once a week and you subscribe to a car cleaning service, you're going to come back and say, wow, these guys done a great job. I'm going to, you know, whatever it was, that was 20 bucks. I'm going to double down on that. Or I really like the fact that these guys come and change my tyres or I get great insurance coverage or whatever. Those are tangible benefits that I think people say that adds value.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People are tired, maybe distracted, and those accidents happen when you least expect them. Because if you're driving 100 kilometres an hour and all of a sudden you come across a deer or a fallen tree or something, you really don't have time to react. That's what the LIDAR system does. And so we're going to learn a huge amount from having those technologies in the car that eight cars. And you think those are subscriptions.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The EX90 will have LIDAR, so we build our own ADAS stack. So ADAS and all the way up to AD. AD is still quite a while off, in my opinion, but the benefits of ADES will continue to come through as computational power increases and as the software becomes better, then you'll be able to go at faster speeds and still do lane changing very safely and so on. We put LIDAR into our car. We put LIDAR as a standard in the EX90 because I like the LIDAR technology. We like the LIDAR technology. I know there's other companies that say you don't need it. But quite frankly, there's nothing else right now that can see 250 meters in pitch blackness. And so that's the safety. And we're safety conscious company. A lot of accidents, unfortunately, a lot of fatal and near fatal accidents happen at night time. And the reason for that is, quite simply, visibility is much less. The roads are actually quieter, so people are not paying as much attention.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think that's the right approach. No, I absolutely don't, because I don't think that GM are ever going to have three and a half billion users that use a product every single day, two, three hundred times a day that they get really used to and they want their car to basically be a simple, easy connection point to that car. So whether it's Android or whether it's Apple or whether it's iOS, it's the same experience. And unless all of a sudden they're going to get into making smartphones that are as competitive as Android and iOS, then I don't personally think that's the best strategy. I think the better strategy is how do you add value for your customer and adding value by saying, you know, inside the car, hey Volvo rather than, hey Google or Hey Seri don't think adds value. You can still use the Volvo operating system. You still always have that.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tier of storage to make your phone work well, and you have competitors who really want that to happen inside the car. GM took CarPlay out of its cars because they want people to interact with their infotainment system. You think that's not the right approach.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, because I update my iPhone the whole time. I would be pretty peeved if every time I update my iPhone they gave me a bill.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I don't buy it, quite frankly. I think there's maybe a bit of inside revenue if you want to go to the upper levels of certain performance or you want to release X amount of performance in the car in terms of acceptation. Well, I'll just give you”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would you like to hire a ski box for the ski season? Yeah, actually, I'm going to opt in on that. You know, would you like access to fast charging and not just in different chargers, but would you like us to be able to have it so that you don't need to get out your car? You just need to plug it in. And we've got everything on the VIN number, your car. So when it's raining and it's 11 o'clock at night. You just drive up, you plug it in, and nothing else. You don't need to download an app or any of that stuff. All in a Volvo app, that's where I think there's a lot more value than us trying to own the center console is to make a platform which is sticky enough to the customer when they say, oh, it used to drive a Volvo and I got insurance through that and they changed my tyres and I got a ski box and these guys really looked after me.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not because they're bad drivers Because somebody somewhere has decided they're going to be a bad driver because they're young and they're inexperienced. Then you see people at 17 winning Wimbledon or the US Open. You think, actually, you know what? It shouldn't just be about age. And so for me, that's a great example where you can have opt-in services on that Volvo app. In Sweden, for example, you need to change your tires in the winter. I want to be sent a signal that says to me, hey, listen, we're coming up on tire change season. It's next Thursday. Would you like us to come and change your tyre? We see where you park your car. Do you want us to come to your workplace, whip off the old tyres, put on the winter tyres and take those summer tyres away and store them for the next season? You're like, heh, that sounds like a great idea. I'm going to opt in on that.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, you can opt out on all of this stuff if you don't want to. But if you want dynamic insurance, for example, that's paid for by how safe a driver you are, and you want coaching, and we can say, hey, listen, you're a 45% driver. If you leave another five meters between you and the car in front and you do this and you do that, your insurance premium will go down. That's a dynamic insurance premium. You don't pay it once a year. Take young people. Young people and even in the USA, but all the world, it's hugely expensive for young people to get car insurance. Why? Because they're young.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm sharing my digital key with my friend because he wants to pick up my car from the stadium that I left it at last night or when I'm sharing my digital key with my kids or when I'm offering insurance services to the customer because I can see because we have 16 cameras and we have ultrasonic sensors we see the car dynamics. We see right now you buy insurance on the basis of what age you are and what your postcode does and when you had a last crash. That's how the actuaries figure out what you should pay as a premium. Nothing to do with how safe a driver you are. Nothing. So other than the fact that you haven't had the crash for a long time. But we'll be able to see how good a driver you are, how close you drive to the car in front, how close you are to the cab, whether you...”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've got to pick your battles right, most people's lives these days are wrapped up in their smartphone, whatever choice they make, Android or Apple. You can either say, I'm going to provide a car that makes that a pleasurable, easy interface experience for you, or you're going to have to have two, you're going to have a different operating system in the car to you have on your phone. And the phone is in people's hands much more often than they sit in the car. The big difference is that you've got to be able to offer benefits through the application layer on the Android that's external to the car. Let me explain what I mean by that. So while you're sitting in the car, that's fine. You're using Android Auto, you're listening to your music or whatever you're doing. Fine. But what you really want, the application layer to do where smartphone is when you're not in the car.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where we were saying, we want to have a base level of Volvo OS that we can sit on top of, but we also want to offer the choice of Android Auto or Apple CarPlay so that they can then offer all the plethora of choices that they've got, whether that's the different apps that you can download into the car itself that sits on that center stack, or just the convenience of having your iPhone or your Android machine connect directly and seamlessly with a car. I don't really get off on the fact that I want a customer to say Hey Volvo. If they say, hey, Google or Hey Siri and there's 7 billion people on the planet that Have an iPhone or an Android, you've got to figure out where you want to spend your engineering dollars and what benefit that brings to the customer or the shareholders.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that was for us, that was a build decision. We were building that software. We're buying the silicon, we're building the software. And we also buy in the sensor set. So we buy the cameras, we buy the LIDAR. We don't think that's our game. We think there's other people that can do that better than us. So just within the safety set, buying silicon, building software, buying the application layer. And some people have chosen to do all of that in between. Same goes for the infotainment stack”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we do want to write the software that connects the silicon to the application layer to make it easy. Let's just pick the safety layer. On the EX90, we've got 16 ultrasonics. We've got eight cameras. We've got five radar systems and a LIDAR system. Okay, we're writing the software stack that goes from the silicon to the application layer because we want to own that software so that we understand everything that's happening in that safety set. All the algorithms, all the sense of fusion software, all the perception software, what the car sees, you're turning the ones and zeros that the car sees into meaningful information that hopefully makes her a better driving experience and protects the driver and the passengers and even the people outside the car.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not really. I think you're making customer benefit choices For me, so when you've got such a big tech agenda and you've got so many investments to make, and there's two parts to that one is dollars, where are you going to spend your engineering dollars? And two is speed. Those are the two currencies that you really need to think about. So I'm constantly making decisions on what do we build versus what do we buy. In terms of silicon, I'll use the safety layer as an example. High computational silicon, you're going to need more and more and more high computational silicon that operates with better performance year over year over year over year. And that's a big investment. Some companies have chosen to invest in that and do their own silicon and SOC. We've chosen to partner up with NVIDIA and we call QOM. Qualcomm does the info stack and Nvidia does the core compute. We think both of those companies are fantastic companies that really understand Silicon and Silicon Development and Silicon Manufacture. So we don't feel we need to own that. We're going to buy that in.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do The question I always think about that's at the all the way at the end of the line. Eventually, these cars are going to drive themselves to have a self-driving car, you need to tell it where to go. And having Google Maps do that and be that layer is different than having you own that layer, right? The point of differentiation collapses to Google. You can get into any car and use Google Maps and the car will go to that place. Do you worry about losing that point of differentiation?”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's called GAS, but basically that's the Android stack that sits in Otto, if you will. It's different, it's slightly different from the Android stack that sits on your cell”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay. And so you moved from the Volvo center stack that was in like the XC40 that I drove an XC40 recharge and that was very much Android in the center stack. And now you've moved over to the Google and the Google services portion of it.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Google operating system, Google Auto Services, GAS as it's called, right? And then we write the base software for the car itself.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not just Android, so we have our own base Otto, which works well. A lot of customers really enjoy that experience. But we also have Apple CarPlay, and you can use the Volvo OS. So you've really got three choices. You can use the base Volvo OS if you want to go and just use that. If you want to use Android Auto, you can use that if you want to use Apple Carpola, you can use that. You know, one of the biggest things I think when you're running a tech company or a company.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was one of the reasons why we did the deal with Northvolt, because Northvolt, I think, have got, you know, here in Sweden, we're fortunate in that we have a huge amount of access to hydro. So that gives us a lot of green energy. Battery manufacturers, especially cam and precursor, can be quite heavy on electrical requirement because of the heat and the electrical requirement. So you really want to have access to affordable green energy. That's really, I think, what makes a big difference in the long run.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's less service and cost for the customers, and then there's zero emissions. So less noise, less vibration, less heat transfer, less servicing costs for the customer and zero emissions for the planet. It becomes just from an engineering perspective, it becomes a logical solution for the future. I mean, I'm sure if we looked 100 years ago, people were saying, I really love steam engines, they're really great. And then we went to petrol, and now we're going to batteries. I'm sure in another 20, 30, 40 years times, there'll be another fantastic breakthrough technology that's even more efficient. But right now, I think we're in the age of the battery battery propulsion for a while yet”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to start with an electric car in many cases. And so for them, those digital natives, as they were the same with smartphones, they're very, very comfortable with that new technology from the get-go. As an engineer as well, I look at it and say, if you take an internal combustion engine, a really good internal combustion engine, you get roughly 35% efficiency from that engine, from the fuel that you put into the movement of the wheels that you get out, and you lose a lot on heat, you lose a lot on vibration, you lose a lot on noise. In an electrical propulsion system, you convert 90 to 93% in efficiency. You know, there's much less service and cost because there's much less moving parts. You don't get a blowing overhead gasket. You don't get oil leaks. You don't get a lot of those parts, especially as motors develop more and more are going to be very high infrequency between servicing, let's call it that.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so, yeah. There's a couple of friction factors towards full scale bev adoption. One is where can I charge and how fast can I charge? Let's call that range anxiety for, you know, if you put a term on that. The other thing is batteries costs. When can I buy a battery vehicle for the same prices as a nice vehicle? And then the last thing is just change itself. People have been driving internal combustion engines for a long time. You alluded to earlier. Some people really like that. They like the noise and the vibration and stuff. And so you're going to find when people go through that change curve of, well, I'm going to have to change technology. I kind of like my ice car to work and I charge how fast can I charge and kind of get price parity. When all those friction factors are taken away, and remember the next generation...”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you want to get to your standard. I think that's the main thing. You saw the same thing back in the 70s or 80s, whatever the hell it was, which was, you know, VHS versus Betamax. Eventually at some point in time you pick a standard because nobody wants to be doing two different types of tapes or three different types of tapes. So you veer towards a standard and you look at the technical benefits of the standards. I think you'll still have different infrastructures and you'll probably have more than one, but I don't think you have a plethora of different standards. I just don't think it's helpful for the customers.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So unbalance when you're saying, okay, we're going to use your connector so we can get access to your charging network. Do you feel that charging networks in the United States will be competitive the way that gas stations are competitive? Or do you think we're all going to sort of converge on Tesla being the infrastructure provider?”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course, in certain terms and conditions that you need to adhere to, of course. But yeah, I think it's a great thing for us. I think it's a great thing for the customers.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the decision for us was we wanted to make sure that we could offer our customers the best experience and there was an opportunity to engage with Tesla charging infrastructure. We thought that was a good thing for our customers. I actually think it's a good thing for Bev adoption in general. Can I go into the terms of it, of course.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, actually, we see a lot of people moving from ice to plug in hybrids and then from plugging hybrids to Bevs. One other thing that we see a lot of people who went from a, let's say, an internal combustion engine to a plug-in hybrid, then the next carrot they buy, maybe a smaller carrot, maybe for one of their kids or just maybe a second car for the home, very often that's a pure bev. They like the Bev driving experience. That's going to be the car that they maybe use frequently around town, around the city, but they still want to plug an electric hybrid for the comfort of mind, if you like, for those longer drives. We definitely see PHEVs being a stepping stone towards full Bev, at least in our customer base.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's fine. We think over time as infrastructure becomes more and fast charging and battery technology develops more and more people convert the full Bev. But we're in a great spot because we have all of those different technologies that we can offer our customers.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It'll be incremental, even if you look at the US, the US is moving really quickly now, East Coast, West Coast, the electrification. We see that clearly. The interior is taking a little bit longer, as you can imagine, there's less infrastructure and there's longer distances to travel. The Inflation Reduction Act, I think, has been a great thing because it will electrify America to some extent because there's incentives now to invest in long-range charge infrastructure or fast charging infrastructure. So hopefully over time you'll see the interior become more electrified as well. But we're in a great position because right now we're not a pure player bev company. We're heading towards becoming 100% Bev, but we have great ice products and we have great mild hybrid and P-Hev products or plug-in hybrid products. And where that makes sense and people really care about having the safety and the reliability of Evolvo, but they choose because of infrastructure or just personal choice they want to have a plug-in electric hybrid.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's very, very few companies that are making 15 plus percent gross margin on pure BEV. And that's because we've been able to focus fully on that car and designing that car for the efficiencies that we managed to squeeze out of it.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we're the only car company, and to my understanding is we're the only car company in the world that split out our Bev margins versus our total margins. When we were going electric, we wanted the markets and we were going public, we were a company. We wanted the markets to really understand the journey and that it would be lower Bev margins than ice to start with, but that we would start to pull that back. And we wanted to be able to show them from the start, this is the starting point, this is the building blocks to where we're going to get to ice bev parity in terms of gross margins. And we're going to take you on that journey and we're going to be transparent about it. And we've done that. And so now we signalled the new EX30. So our total margins for the whole company is about 19% in last quarter. And we've signalled that in the new EX30 of gross margins on that fully electric car of between 15 and 20%. So, I mean, that pretty much takes us into the sphere where...”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That maybe some other people do, and maybe that's part of the protection as well. Having customers that shop in the premium sector that have a little bit more disposable income, that don't worry as much about inflation, and that really care about the brand attributes like safety and so on. So they're probably never going to compromise on that. I think maybe that gives us a little bit more protection. But I understand the question completely because you would think those headwinds that you would start to see consumer sentiment drop off. And you're seeing that maybe in some other industries, but we don't see it evolve, I'm glad to say.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can only answer for Volvo. We see that the demand for our cars, and maybe it's because we're fair and square in the premium sector, but demands for our car is held up incredibly well. It's been really robust globally, as well as across the whole portfolio. I don't see that. I mean, I understand the question completely because when you see high energy prices and high inflation, you think at some point consumer sentiment is going to change and you would see a soft enough, not necessarily a soften off on Bev versus Ice, but maybe even a soften off in the whole industry because it's a big purchase. I think if you're just in the mass market, you're much more probably susceptible to that. That if you're in the premium market, we actually don't see it. I keep an eye on that because it's something that I do think about, but I don't see any increased order cancellations. I don't see order intakes lowing down. But remember, we're 1% of the total car market worldwide. So we don't play in the volume.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People really care about top speed, but no one ever hits it. It's that torque that is the performance and electric cars kind of get it for free. This brings me to Tesla. Tesla, obviously the poster child for the EV industry. They sell a vision of the future. They sell one personality in particular that has a vision for the future. It feels like the entire EV industry set its targets for sales and electrification based around what had been apparently perfectly elastic demand for Teslas. They were selling every single one they could make. The prices were going up. That seems to have come to an end, right? They're lowering prices. I'm seeing other UV makers with cars sitting on their lots. Obviously interest rates are very high. Do you think that that was a miss that we misforecasted EV sales based on what was happening with Tesla?”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For us, the benefits that we see in our battery technology or the benefits that we see in our motors or in inverter technology manifest itself in the specs in a different way. It's like how fast can you charge the car? How long is the range? Those are the things now which people care, I think, more about. Because as you say, you get talked for free in electrical propulsion. So what else? People really care about range. They care about cost, of course, and the cost of batteries versus ice, and they care about fast charging speeds and of course safety. They want to make sure that the batteries are safe and that it's not going to cause them any problems safe and reliable. So that plays well, I think, for us. We're always going to make sure that our battery technology is safe and reliable, as well as the whole car itself. I do get your point in so much as I think it becomes much more difficult for maybe some of the other car manufacturers that have always branded themselves on performance or, as you say, turbocharging or top speeds or whatever.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think it's much if you used to be someone who differentiated your brand on performance, then I think that's much more difficult. We always differentiated a brand on safety and sustainability and the human-centricness and the family values of Volvo”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's not the drive train anymore, right? Like, that's what I mean The idea that we're going to talk about how the car moves itself, and that will be the thing that gets anyone excited. It seems to be almost over.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think if you look at, say, premiums, because we operate in the premium arena, but we all take a slightly different door to come into that premium arena. Some take the door of, as you say, performance. Some take the door of luxury and refinement. Some take the door of technology. And everybody has a little bit of everything. We take the door of safety, sustainability and human-centric tech. That's what gets us in.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have yet to see any companies market their electric motor innovations in the same way. There's not a direct connection between, all right, it's a gigantic American V8 engine and we're going to market the technical capabilities of this engine the way that we used to with Volvo is not making its own motors and it has its own inverters and we can market those directly because to some approximation every electric car kind of drives the same, right? They all have Incredible amount of low end torque, and they're very quiet, and that is not the part of the experience that matters anymore. Have you thought about, you're a consumer electronics person? Have you thought about, okay, we've got to market the cars differently now because the drivetrain is no longer so differentiated.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And that's the one, you know, that's where we really want to make those investments. And we've saw that since we brought in those electric motors, just as an example, since we brought that in-house and applied our own expertise to that, and we can take a motor, we can test it, we can do that 10 times a day, we get, again, back to that clock speed. If you're trying to increase the benefit of all these things need to work together, so the batteries, the motors, the inverters and the software obviously has to play to the car to make sure that the car's getting powered in the way it should be getting powered. When you have all of that technology in-house and you've built all of the test rigs, you can cycle that multiple times a day and you just keep making those improvements. So since we brought that electrical propulsion in-house, we've made pretty meaningful improvements to the efficiency of that particular part of the car.”
2023-11-14 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Volvo CEO Jim Rowan thinks dropping CarPlay is a mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT