Volvo Cars and Polestar will be among the first in the industry to introduce Prime Video to its vehicles.
Volvo Cars & Polestar continue to operate as distinct entities, but it’s clear that shared underlying technology means a lot of similar rollouts are going to happen simultaneously. Earlier this year, both companies announced a move over to the North American Charging Standard in the US market. Today, they’re both announcing new ways to keep yourselves entertained in the car with Prime Video.
That’s right, both Volvo Cars and Polestar are among the first to bring Prime Video into vehicles. Prime Video is of course Amazon’s answer to Netflix and has a decent roster of TV Shows and Movies available to stream for a reasonable monthly fee.
This app should be arriving pre-installed on the applicable vehicles starting 18 September 2023, but if you already have a compatible system, an over-the-air (OTA) update roll out eventually. The YouTube app is also scheduled to become available on compatible Polestar and Volvo vehicles.
You might be wondering what the safety-obsessed Volvo Cars is doing introducing a couple of video streaming apps to their vehicles. Well, they’re only accessible when the car is fully stationary. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve had to park and wait for a loved one or friend. Most of the time, the solution is to pull out your phone and entertain yourself on a tiny screen. By introducing these streaming apps natively, you get a much larger screen with a much more powerful audio experience.
In my own experience driving cross country with an electric Volvo, I did have an instance of waiting about an hour in the car while it charged up. In my case, I used this time to write and upload an article. Now there’s an option to watch something while waiting. You can do so with the air conditioning turned on with a small penalty to the battery’s state of charge while waiting or its rate of charge while charging up. Now the only thing left to wait for is an integrated popcorn maker.
