Interview: Alwin Bakkenes, head of software engineering, Volvo Cars

Connecting vehicles

Bakkenes joined Volvo in November 2022, having previously been vice-president at Aptiv, chairman of the board of directors at Smashing Ideas, and executive vice-president for automotive at Luxsoft.

One of his big achievements at Volvo has been leading the digital transformation that accompanied the unveiling of the EX60, the first car designed to launch with Google Gemini AI assistant and connectivity delivered by the Snapdragon Auto Connectivity Platform from Qualcomm Technologies.

As Computer Weekly discovered in January, the EX60 is the most intelligent Volvo and can travel 810km on a single charge. The car also has the latest iteration of HuginCore, the manufacturer’s in-house-developed core system for its software-defined vehicles (SDVs).

“Volvo Cars has always been known for safety,” says Bakkenes, referring to the journey the in-house software team has taken during its digital transformation. “Over the years, after we started to do innovations in terms of collision avoidance – because, of course, avoiding a collision is better than protecting people in a collision – we started to bring computer vision and radar into cars.”

Bakkenes says the software team learned that getting data from cars digitally would enable them to do even more. “So, we started making every single car connected and started doing more in-house development. We built an AI factory and built an in-house team of some 3,000 developers that build this software stack for us,” he says.

“One of our biggest accomplishments with the optimisation work that we did for the EX60, where we did our second-generation zonal architecture, was that we really simplified the approach. We reduced weight, a lot of packaging space, we made the technology much more efficient and made it applicable to every single car in our cycle plan.”

Digitising the stack

Bakkenes says the result of this digital transformation is that Volvo has transitioned from a mechanically oriented company to an organisation that successfully manages its technology base, with HuginCore sitting at the heart of its future automotive innovations.

“We now have a single tech stack strategy for our cars, which ultimately gives us more time to spend on building fantastic customer features and experiences,” he says. “And that’s one of the biggest parts of the journey that we’ve been on over the past few years.”

HuginCore features an electrical architecture, a core computer, zone controllers and software. The name Hugin comes from Nordic mythology – Odin had two ravens, Hugin and Munin. Bakkenes says Hugin was the raven who flew to scout and then whispered in Odin’s ear about everything in the vicinity.

“We now have a single tech stack strategy for our cars, which ultimately gives us more time to spend on building fantastic customer features and experiences”

Alwin Bakkenes, Volvo Cars

“That’s like what we are doing with the core system,” he says. “HuginCore perceives the world around it and gives us the right information to make decisions on avoiding collisions and more. It’s the core system and tech stack that we’re standardising on. And, of course, it’s much more than a piece of compute. It’s vehicle architecture, cloud infrastructure and factory infrastructure.”

Beginning with the EX60 implementation, Bakkenes says the aim is to ensure the company builds its innovations around this stack, rather than using multiple platforms. “Which is ultimately not how modern tech companies, like Apple, would do things,” he says, referring to the company’s shift to becoming a company that manages its technology foundation.

“For example, we have a partnership with a UK company called Brief that is really good at database analytics on battery cells and how you store energy as fast as possible. So, not only do we have a good, robust 800-volt system, we’re able to push a lot of energy into the cells for a prolonged period of time, meaning that we avoid the standard curves of charging cars.”

Delivering innovation

The progress made by Bakkenes and his team was recognised recently, with Volvo achieving S&P Global Mobility Level 5 capability in SDVs, the highest category in its assessment of automotive software maturity. Notably, Volvo is the only legacy manufacturer to have achieved this rating.

“They looked at what we were doing,” says Bakkenes, referring to the evaluation process. “We explained to them how we work and what the architecture looks like. Having a fully software-defined architecture means we should create significant customer benefits. So, we’re proud. It’s recognition that we’re doing good work.”

The recognition from S&P Global highlights Volvo’s attempts to improve vehicle functionality through software, including over-the-air updates to add safety features, unlock faster charging speeds, increase driving range and enhance user experiences. Bakkenes says the company’s digitisation is all about leaving behind traditional domain-based architectures.

The new approach being pioneered by Volvo focuses on three levels: a high-performance compute cluster where the team works with key partners, such as Nvidia and Qualcomm; zonal architecture with high-integrity applications that require low latency and fast response times, such as for safety-critical functions, including brakes and acceleration; and infotainment, where Volvo works closely with Google and its Android operating system (OS).

“We work very heavily with partners to build the foundations for that strategy. We work with Nvidia on developing the safety-critical, high-performance execution environment, so we can execute high-integrity applications on compute clusters, such as ADAS,” he says.

“We also work with Google deeply and closely, because the Android platform creates an openness and an ecosystem that is a fantastic foundation to build a modern infotainment system, which has customer-facing functionality, such as Gemini for conversational AI and Google Maps, and an open app store that we use to bring in massive amounts of content.”

Embracing AI

Volvo continues to hone its approach to SDVs. As Computer Weekly reported at the time, the company extended its partnership with Google in May 2025. Volvo believes that with Gemini in the car, drivers can better understand what they want through natural conversations.

As well as using AI services to boost internal operational efficiency, Bakkenes says the company uses emerging technology in two key product areas.

First, in collision-avoidance systems. With a strong heritage in vehicle safety, Volvo has collected millions of data points since 2020, all with customer consent, to improve ADAS.

“We’ve seen that building AI models that we train on what happens and what will go wrong – thereby preventig things from happening – is incredibly valuable,” he says. “So, we literally built a company, a subsidiary called Zenseact, which is part of my scope. I’m the chairman of the company, and it’s deeply integrated into our way of working in engineering.”

Second, Bakkenes says his team is focused on customer-oriented, AI-enabled products. Using tools such as Gemini, drivers will use in-car systems to plan routes, help schedule activities and organise their lives. “AI is not just about telling you things,” he says. “It’s about becoming more agentic and taking care of tasks in your life.”

While Volvo has made significant advances in AI with the launch of the EX60, the company is eager to ensure that drivers of older vehicles can also benefit from its data-powered services. To that end, the company recently announced that Google Gemini is rolling out to Volvo vehicles dating back more than five years. Bakkenes suggests this decision is a step change in how drivers interact with cars and how manufacturers support them.

“We’re bringing Gemini to every car we’ve produced since 2020,” he says. “Six years ago, we had no idea what a transformer-based conversational assistant was or would become. So, the fact that we can bring Gemini to those cars is fantastic.”

Scaling improvements

Bakkenes reflects on the digital transformation changes he’s overseen during the past few years and suggests his team is approaching what he calls “harvest time”.

“We now have a foundation where we have a good architecture,” he says. “We have a large amount of high-performance computing to grow and develop in the future. The foundation of the technology is there, and it’s about applying and scaling it.”

Bakkenes says the desire to push Gemini-powered services to older vehicles shows that his team’s efforts aren’t just focused on tomorrow’s technology – they’re also focused on supporting long-standing customers who have committed money to the car company. 

“The harvesting part is about us saying, ‘OK, so now we can put more energy into enhancing the experiences’, and that means refining the user interface implementation, and tweaking and optimising it until you get a product that fits day-to-day usage perfectly,” he says. “We want our cars to keep improving over time.”