EPIC GAMES AND VOLVO ARE PARTNERING TO POWER THEIR NEXT-GENERATION ELECTRIC CARS

Fri 03 June 2022:

Volvo announced a partnership with Epic Games, the creator of the Fortnite video game, to leverage its 3D production platform ‘Unreal Engine’ to power its next generation of electric cars on Wednesday.

Volvo Cars will now use Epic’s real-time 3D design tool to create digital interfaces within its vehicles and produce real-time graphics.

Volvo Cars is the first European automaker to use the Unreal Engine for human-machine interface development (HMI).

“To offer our customers the best possible user experience and contribute to a safe and personal drive, we need rich, immersive and responsive visualisation inside our cars,” said Henrik Green, chief product officer at Volvo Cars.

“Running Unreal Engine in our cars enables this and makes it even more enjoyable to spend time inside a Volvo,” Green said in a statement.

The collaboration will initially focus on the Driver Information Module (DIM), one of the displays inside the cabin that provide the driver with relevant information and infotainment features.

In the next generation of Volvo cars, customers will encounter impressive, high-quality graphics on those displays.

Much sharper renderings, richer colours and brand new 3D animations are only the first steps as Volvo Cars developers continue to push the graphic envelope, said the company.

As a result, Volvo Cars’ next generation infotainment system will be more than twice as fast as its predecessor, while graphics generation and processing inside the cabin will be up to ten times faster.

The first car to contain the new graphics is the new, all-electric flagship model that Volvo Cars will reveal later this year.

That model is the first of a new generation of all-electric Volvo cars as it aims to only sell pure electric cars by 2030.

Volvo Cars has an ambition to develop half of all the software inside its cars in-house by mid-decade and is recruiting extensively within software development.