The full Polestar 3 design isn't revealed yet, but Volvo released a camouflaged photo.
The companies are working to make car information even more useful. If Wintel is the default software combo of the PC era, then the smartphone equivalent has to be either Android or Andcom. Qualdroid? The Polestar 3 electric SUV is due in 2022. The new interface looked like a sneak peek.
Volvo's Polestar 2 was the first car to ship the OS. Unlike Apple's CarPlay, which runs on your phone, the main car operating system of the automotive OS is a custom version ofAndroid. Even if you have an Apple device, your car still runs the operating system. The Polestar 2 used an x86 chip, but now Volvo is using a Qualcomm chip with its OS.
The integration of cars with technology is difficult. It takes five years for a car to be developed, which seems almost incompatible with the pace of development of computers and phones. Design wins for the platform are being announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, but the platform was actually announced back in 2019. The Gen 3 automotive platform is based on the Snapdragon 820 chip, which is an ARM flagship chip. You may remember this chip from the phones that came out. The Polestar 2 had an Intel Atom.
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Volvo is on the same hardware and software platform as a phone, so it's no wonder it has a consistent upgrade path. This consistency could lead to a faster path to market for hardware. The Gen 4 automotive platform was announced at last year's Consumer Electronics Show, but won't be in a car for a while.
The Gen 3 has more features than the previous generation, but you couldn't get on the previous one. Supporting a car, especially an Android one, also requires support for virtualization. The gauge cluster display behind the steering wheel needs to be run by something other than the infotainment system. The gauge cluster can't run an operating system. It's not allowed for critical driving components like the speedometer to be used if the processor is too slow, because it's not a real-time OS. The solution is to have the Snapdragon 820 run two OSes, with one running the center screen and the other running the gauge cluster display. The gauge cluster can still send a user interface for things like media info, but the speedo is off-limits.
There is a Polestar 3 driver display. A real-time OS handles the speedometer, while the real-time OS provides a Google Maps and media info.
The idea of resurrecting the 820 for a modern product is intriguing. Product support is a major barrier for the longevity of phones. It would have been possible for the Snapdragon to support three major versions of the Android operating system. When the third-generation car chip was announced, it was clear that support for it would be shut down. The development of the Polestar 3 is still going on despite the fact that the company doesn't want to pass on the work to other companies.
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Three years of major OS updates and four years of security updates are the public support timelines for phone chips. When asked if there was a plan for car support, the company wouldn't give any details, but said it would support car chips for longer than phone chips.
Since phones are its biggest market, it makes sense that a chip in a car would give it a quick way to market. The solution is not ideal. The size and power restrictions of a phone are not found in a car. A car is large. The floor has a battery. The cooling can be large if you need it to be. Many companies in the industry are running into the same problem, which is that the biggest ARM chips are mostly for the phone. Apple is setting the trend by increasing the size of its computers, but it can do that because it has a custom chip-design division. Most other companies don't. The company plans to start designing more powerful ARM chips for laptops and cars in the future.
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