The Swedish carmaker’s smartphone integration offer, which already includes Apple CarPlay, will now come with Android Auto functionality in Volvo’s large driver interface. Volvo’s 90 series cars will also now feature an Over-The-Air navigation update system, which ensures that the car always has the latest maps on-board.

Volvo Cars is the only car maker with a split screen interface that allows you to use both your smartphone functionality and your in-car features without changing views. This is primarily a safety-related feature, designed to make our interface the easiest to use on the market. In the same way our Over-The-Air update capability means that you will always have the latest maps updates to hand.

—Dr Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President Research & Development at Volvo Car Group

Volvo Cars is also delivering two new connected safety systems that will make their debut in the XC90, S90 and V90: Slippery Road Alert and Hazard Light Alert which use the cloud to share safety-critical data between cars.

Today’s Volvos contain many safety sensors. We believe that sharing safety-related information—whether around conditions or hazards on the road ahead—is a thoughtful and useful way to use the information the car is already gathering. With Connected Safety, Volvo Cars is helping to define a completely new type of road safety system.

—Dr Peter Mertens

Volvo Cars’ Scalable Product Architecture, on which the 90 series and coming 60 series will be built, means that new safety systems can be added across the range of cars built on the platform with little or no delay.

Slippery Road Alert increases the driver’s awareness of both current road conditions and those on the road ahead, by anonymously collecting road surface information from cars further ahead on the road and warning drivers approaching a slippery road section in advance.

Hazard Light Alert forewarns drivers of vehicles that have activated their hazard warning lights on the road ahead, providing the driver with enough time to slow down. This is particularly useful on blind corners and over the crest of hills in the road. These two new connected safety systems will go live in Sweden and Norway initially with a planned roll-out to other markets.

The updated models will go into production in mid-November.