Volvo Centum is Dalton Maag's new typeface for Volvo
(wallpaper.com)94 points by ohjeez 17 hours ago
94 points by ohjeez 17 hours ago
> The comments here sound like they're from people who don't work in tech or at large companies...
Or they're from people that read the headline/article.
It editorializes the motivation for this being "Safety" and thus, a lot of users are pointing out how hollow that rings or how misguided it seems when there's ways we'd much prefer they take to improve safety. For example, lack of physical buttons and the consolidation of everything into the touchscreen, which the article also acknowledges (and in turn, acknowledges that Volvo is aware people are growing more disgruntled with it).
This isn't a lack of understanding that big corporations are capable of having multiple people doing multiple things, this is us questioning if Volvo's reputation for actually caring about safety still holds true, or if their new owners with the final say in these matters (Geely) is just riding on that reputation by ignoring the much more pressing safety concerns yet knowingly cashing in on that reputation-capital by pandering to those same concerns with a font.
The headline wasn't written by Volvo.
Does the font improve safety and is that the motivation, or not?
There are comments here like "They should instead focus on their overall software stability and usability", and spankalee is correctly pointing out that it's a false dichotomy.
I think the font looks lovely. Great touches.
I have a Volvo with Android Automotive. And I think touchscreens in cars are trash, and Android particularly so; the latency is horrendous, the rear-view camera only works 50% of the time, everything just feels like the cheapest trash Android tablet from a decade ago.
I really wish this car just had physical controls and a double-din Carplay deck from Pioneer or whatever, the experience would be so much better.
I honestly believe I'm going to get into an accident in a parking lot due to the horrendous sight lines and unreliable camera.
Font is nowhere near as nice as Elston/Volvo Broad; but I suppose it's better for touchscreens. My advice for Volvo:
1.) Go back to actual buttons/dials (with the old font, please)
2.) Fix the comically bad horrifying electronics issues the new models have.
> for the Swedish carmaker
Chinese. Volvo is a fully Chinese company that has some people working for them in Sweden. That does not make Volvo a Swedish carmaker. Zeekr also isn't a Swedish carmaker, despite having an R&D center in Gothenburg.
A friend recently got a steering pump for his classic Volvo 940 and instead of a European part the official Volvo dealership gave him a Chinese part. Broke in a couple of months.
The times that a Volvo would do 500,000 kilometers with basis maintenance is in the past.
That’s anecdotal.
So do you think iPhones built in China have terrible build quality? How about the ones made in India? I have an India-built iPhone — can’t tell a difference.
Chinese parts don’t necessarily mean low quality. It may have meant that in the past, but not anymore. People need to get over that mentality.
There’s nothing inherently magical about anywhere (be it Europe, America, India, China, or anywhere else) that guarantees things made there are of impeccable or terrible quality. If it’s built well it’s built well.
The fact is that Volvo's reputation and prioritization of quality builds and stringent safety measures (I owe my life to a rental Volvo S90) are not shared by its Chinese parent company. When that philosophy trickles top-down, Volvo is affected.
In Apple's case, even as a iOS hater (yet a user), I would still say that Apple prioritizes product quality standards at a very high level. That culture trickles down as imposed requirements from Apple to its suppliers.
> Volvo is a fully Chinese company that has some people working for them in Sweden
Volvo (Cars) doesn't just "have some people working for them" in Sweden. Volvo Personvagnar Aktiebolag was founded in, and is incorporated in, Sweden. Their HQ is in Sweden.
Zeekr was started by a Chinese company in China and has their HQ in China.
I consider it "Swedish-Chinese"
Volvo has more people working for it in China than in Sweden.
Volvo builds more cars in China than it does in Sweden.
Volvo is owned by the Chinese.
Arguably more of the design for Volvo cars is done in China. It depends on whether you consider the visible design more important or the powertrain.
Volvo is part Swedish, but it's much more "Chinese-Swedish" than "Swedish-Chinese".
You wouldn't say Thinkpad is a US laptop anymore.
Milwaukee tools? Chinese.
You wouldn't say that many of the skyscrapers in China designed by international artists and architects weren't Chinese.
It doesn't matter who is designing the Chinese cars. They're Chinese owned and operated. That's where the buck stops.
What's to stop the Swedish portion from being downsized in the future? That call would be made in China.
It's technically not wrong to describe Volvo as Swedish. It was founded in Sweden, the main office remains in Sweden, but it is fully owned by China.
Swedish or not is a matter of perspective at this point.
Similarly for mojang, king and dice. All founded in Sweden, main offices in Stockholm, and owned by American companies(ms, ms, and ea, respectively)
Arguably powerhouses of Swedish gaming, arguably American affiliates in Sweden.
It's more chinese now than it ever was American, but it's certainly not an absolute thing. Thanks to the global supply chain, it's a big complicated spectrum compounded by a bunch of "it depends". If you don't want to dwell in that pedantry, don't blame you (though I am easily nerd-sniped by discussions of logistics), but without that, that essentially leaves us with "Who owns it" and "Where is it Headquartered." There's also "what are the demographics of their employees" to see if there's a strong representation of a single country ID, but that information isn't always readily available.
Volvo Cars is still publicly traded. Ticker symbol is VOLCAR B on the Swedish NASDAQ: https://au.finance.yahoo.com/quote/VOLCAR-B.ST/
Geely owns around 79% of the shares, with the rest split up between pension funds and private equity.
IKEA is still Swedish despite being incorporated in The Netherlands and having all their "charities" in The Netherlands. For companies of that size, being incorporated somewhere is just an administrative trick to lower taxes. The same way I structured my mortgage to maximise tax returns.
Volvo Cars has been bought by Geely. That is not comparable.
No the parent companies are always incorporated in the US, usually in Deleware.
They funnel all of their foreign profits through various tax shelter subsidiaries in Ireland and similar locations.
Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Netflix are all incorporated in Deleware, Apple is incorporated in California.
Well I have recently noticed many news organizations don’t refer to the Detroit automakers as ‘the big3’ anymore. They make it a point to say ford and gm and quietly leave Stellantis out of the mix. Although Stellantis has strong presence in US as formerly Chrysler and Fiat Chrysler, the reality is they are not American auto company anymore. I’d guess they’re counted as European.
Would you consider Ram as still being American? I have to assume a lot of their manufacturing is still done in the US due to a limited international market for their trucks.
2010 was the year Volvo ownership went to Geely, so your xc60 was designed and built under Ford ownership. The xc60 is a big, expensive SUV (at least for us EU residents) so presumably there should be a quality engine in there.
Some smaller models at the time had a PSA (Ford/Peugeot) engine which don't come anywhere near 300k before blowing up (or simply becoming very expensive to maintain).
The latest electric EX30 model reuses the Chinese built Zeekr X design. Seems like they drive ok, but if they can get 300k remains to be seen. Haven't seen any used with more than around 50k on them.
I drove the EX30 for a few days as a loaner. Build quality is nothing in comparison to what e.g. the XC40 provides. I get it, it's cheaper, but it does not feel like it's a Volvo any more.
I wonder if its open license. Not as impactful as seat belts, but it would be nice to see volvo continue that legacy.
> Not as impactful as seat belts, but it would be nice to see volvo continue that legacy
I'm afraid that legacy is long lost, Volvo is a very different company today than it used to be.
Volvo no longer exists. It's a brand name owned by a conglomerate, the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
I mean, it does exist, it goes by "Volvo Car AB", and it's a real company owned by Geely Holding (full name "Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd.").
But it does exist, just isn't the same as it used to be, back in the "seat-belts is for everyone" era.
Unless they're covered by a design patent, it's a free for all anyway in many places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
I think you are missing the point. The font curves/shapes/beziers are not copyrightable. But the source code and resulting font file is (everywhere). Fonts are licensed just like software (or more like software plugins).
So you can take any typeface and trace/redraw it just fine. But you can't use the original font files unless you have proper license.
That's exactly what I was wondering, since I vaguely remember that all this "copyrighted fonts" silly business boils down to the exact source code, and the same shape can be represented a hundred ways. So, what's the big deal, anyway? I never tried to do it, but I'd assume that to make a "different" copy of a font with minimal human intervention must be a trivial computing task by now. Sure, in theory there are subtleties like many possible ligatures and kerning, but I doubt it's really that critical. And it only matters if you only have a picture with so many latter combinations. If you have the actual font file, you have full information anyway.
And if so, why people still even bother with all that "font licenses" stuff and such? I'd think the only reason to buy a font by now must be when design studio actually does custom work for you. And the emphasis is on "custom", because it isn't truly "for you": anyone will be effectively free to use it after you use it once anywhere.
New Volvos let you “hey Google, turn on my seat heating”. I wish it wasn’t google, but the voice interface is great while driving.
Oh lovely, now my kids can fuck with my seat, assuming the computer can hear one of them over the other one talking about something else. This is a regression in usability compared to luxury cars from 30 years ago.
That picture of the dashboard displaying "Hello, Liam" is what makes me super happy that I bought a 2022 Honda CR-V with a minimal computerized dashboard. I do not want my car knowing who I am.
Out of curiosity. It is possible to use a modern Volvo without a Google account?
Let's Windowsify it.
"Welcome to your Volvo, let's get started"
"Please wait while we prepare your car!"
"Something went wrong."
Just because it doesn’t have a HUD on your dashboard doesn’t mean your vehicle isn’t tied to your personal identity in myriad ways. Almost all cars ship with sophisticated telematics systems nowadays.
I'm just sick of interfaces pretending to be human. Be an unabashed interface, just show me the gauges or weather or anything functional on boot-up. (Unless you're KITT- KITT can talk to me.)
That message is really just confirmation of which driver profile is active. It could say “selected profile: Liam”, but “hello” is just as good, I think.
It's the difference between the Star Trek computer and HAL-9000
Concur. In fact I feel like it's painfully off-brand for Volvo to go all-in on touchscreens. They were so proud about inventing the 3-point safety belt that they embedded it into their logo for decades. Volvo has always been about safety and to-the-point functionality. If any brand could get an enthusiastic following (and a productive marketing campaign) for de-emphasizing screens and emphasizing buttons, it's them.
I expected to hate a touch-screen for the main UI, but in my Volvo ex30 there is just so much less to monitor and _do_ while driving that it’s a really relaxing and enjoyable driving experience. Because I’m just paying attention to where the car is going, it feels a lot safer to me vs my previous manual-transmission ICE car.
There’s a big speedometer top right (it’s right-hand drive), an indicator of the driving mode (manual, cruise-control, pilot assist), and the rest is basically map/navigation. No gears, no RPM, no oil temp, no cryptic warning lights.
Steering wheel controls for music, calls, speed control, etc are fine, but the voice control over music, navigation and climate are so good I barely use them: “hey google, make it a bit cooler in here” or “hey google, let’s go to xxx” both work basically flawlessly.
I'm the owner of a 2020 Volvo V60 that has been at Waterloo Volvo since March of this year, racking up an increasingly terrifying bill of various parts and wiring harnesses all ordered one after the other from Sweden.
Despite my frustrations with their shop, they have been very good about keeping me in a revolving door of 2025 and 2026 loaner cars, especially the XC40 and XC60. Despite the occasional glitched audio or freezing bugs, I think they really have done a good job with the Android Automotive integration. It's nice having it logged in and able to see my Google Maps search history, but without having to actually have my phone on me or plugged in for CarPlay. For example, if another family member borrows the car and all that stuff just works for them too without them having to separately configure their phone.
I would be nervous about how well it all will be supported over the long term, especially once these cars are >4yrs old and off lease. But at that point you can always fall back to projection.
This is the state of Volvo innovation in 2025, a legible font. Geely has not been good for Volvo.
For a giant tablet with no buttons that never belonged on a dashboard. It is common knowledge that buttons are better for drivers. For a company supposedly focused on safety, they make their cars more dangerous for drivers by installing touchscreens and removing buttons.
As cars go to shit, I'm more and more glad I live in NYC and mainly use public transportation
As an owner of a Volco Electric, I am happy that they are focusing on fonts and adding nicknames to cars instead of fixing the countless bugs and issues these cars have regarding software. /s
Issues I encountered: - The schedule for AC charging moves by 1 hour when DST changes. So someone thought let's ignore daylight saving times for that. - The app randomly says "could not start heating/cooling", but still started it. - The last few times, AC schedule and power limit were ignored by the car (so charged 16 A but the car said only 14 A allowed) - Randomly, the AC schedule is in a random timezone (like 7-9h lff), but just for one day. - Sound sometimes does not work, like at all. Reboot the center display helps, but takes a couple of minutes.
Most days, it feels like they don't drive their own cars.
Regardless, I think the font is somewhat nice.
Agreed. The software situation seems to be getting more confusing by the month. AAOS builds have suddenly jumped from 3.x to 4.x and the release notes say "various fixes". Um, like what? Was there a major update to something or not?
I'm still on a AAOS 2.x release from 2023 and will not upgrade at this point.
Why does a car company need to develop its own typeface?
Is it more cost-effective? Is it to have better control?
Is it for branding? (Although it does not appear unique/novel)
It’s not like it needs to solve something that isn’t addressed by other typefaces —at least I don’t see it. It’s not a radical departure from existing typefaces.
It beats the bad dream material of every car using Calibri as the only font.
Like what if Mercedes used Comic Sans.
To me it's indistinguishable from IBM Plex Sans, besides a simplified dingus on the lowercase g
Well thanks for that rabbit hole. I was hoping the dingus was the actual term, but sadly not.
For anyone needing some pub quiz trivia, a lower case g has the top half which is called the bowl, the bit top right is called the ear, then the bottom is called a loop tail when it's closed, or just a tail when it's open, and is joined by a link.
This is not a legible font. You can clearly see they did not distinguish uppercase o and 0 (zero) at all. Uppercase i and lowercase L are barely distinguishable. Classic font blunders.
That makes sense for code or technical text, but it is less relevant for car UIs. In an infotainment system you almost never see ambiguous strings where O vs 0 or I vs l matters. Everything is highly contextual, short, and glance-based. These fonts are tuned for distance, motion, glare, and quick recognition, not for reading arbitrary identifiers. If it tested poorly in real driving conditions that would be a real problem, but judging it by programmer font rules feels like the wrong yardstick.
Yikes - I thought it looked fine at first but that's a wide zero.
The comments here sound like they're from people who don't work in tech or at large companies...
The Volvo software design team isn't responsible for fixing electronics bugs, and maybe not even responsible for the presence or lack of physical buttons. They didn't even make the font - it was contracted to a design studio. I seriously doubt this effort distracted too much from fixing the other things people care about. Big companies do multiple things at once.