Sensus Connect – Volvo Cars’ cloud solution offers total connectivity
Sensus Connect – Volvo Cars’ cloud solution offers total connectivity
With Sensus Connect, Volvo Cars now offers an updated on-board infotainment and navigation solution, offering customers a fully connected experience. The cloud-based services allow drivers to discover new restaurants at their destination, stream their favourite music seamlessly and much more.
The cloud-enabled connected car services across the Volvo product portfolio is the latest proof-point of the visionary partnership between Volvo Car Group and Ericsson. Leveraging extensive consumer research and industry-leading innovation, the all-Swedish partnership has focused on developing a solution that supports current and future connected car needs by combining Volvo Cars’ driver behaviour expertise and Ericsson’s consulting and systems integration know-how.
“Technology should make your life easier. That’s why we listened carefully to our customers when creating Sensus Connect. It’s not about offering a thousand apps; it’s about giving you precisely what you need, before you even knew you needed it,” says David Holecek, Connectivity Brand Manager at Volvo Cars.
The in-car experience includes a novel take on all aspects of travelling. Tens of thousands of radio stations can now be enjoyed in the car and the new navigation system allows the driver to set destinations through their mobile device and home computer.
Volvo Cars is one of few car manufacturers that strategically invests and partners in cloud-based solutions. The Volvo solution offers a branded look and feel and the possibility to remotely update content over air and time.
“It’s all about giving everyone an enjoyable, easy to use and intuitive experience. There is no point in filling a car with technology if it comes off as overwhelming, so our main focus is always to give our customers the best experience available and make it easy to digest. Our cloud-based apps update seamlessly. Sensus offers the optimal combination of input/output methods and allows the driver to turn the entire car into a Wi-Fi hotspot for all of their connected devices,” David Holecek says.
Volvo’s own connectivity roadmap started back in 2001 with the launch of Volvo On Call, and new Sensus Connect become the new connectivity base which will carry over into Volvo’s new vehicle platform, SPA (Scalable Product Architecture).
Connectivity to the cloud is through the customer’s smart-phone, connected via Bluetooth with internet sharing enabled. If the customer has specified the Volvo On Call option, a SIM-card can be installed in the vehicle which uses the antenna on the vehicle which gives a better signal than through a phone.
Specifying Sensus Connect upgrades the standard 5” HMI (Human Machine Interface) screen to the 7” screen.
The system can also be upgraded with Sensus Navigation with turn-by-turn navigation and 3D mapping. With the navigation system, the customer will also receive free life-time map updates.
The HMI screen now incorporates better graphics and details have been refined, even down to the matching of the screen graphics colour to the theme chosen on the driver’s TFT driver display.
The multimedia system now allows for customer to download music straight from a CD or USB, into the hard drive of the infotainment system.
The Bluetooth telephone system has been further enhanced with the possibility for the reading out of text messages received.
Sensus Connect Apps
· TuneIn – 100,000 global radio stations
· Rdio – streaming music service
· Stitcher – on-demand radio shows and podcasts
· Weather – view weather forecasts for your local area
· Park and Pay – find available parking and pay for it from your car
· Glympse – dynamic, temporary location sharing
· Send to Car – find your destination on your phone and send it to your car’s navigation system
· Wikipedia – enriched local points-of-interest information
· Find Fuel – find your nearest fuel station
· Local Search – powered by HERE, find your nearest facilities such as hotels, restaurants and more
· Connected service booking – the car knows when a service is due and will pre-book itself for a convenient service appointment