[burak]

Hi All, some say there is no SIM card in the P8. Some say three months data included. There is no information on the Volvo website. My dealer showed me a document for accessing the modem. It buried in the trunk behind/below the back seats. 1.5h labour to access it. There is a SIM card holder near the cabin light switches. Nobody knows what it is.
In my previous gas engine XC40 I always used my phone's internet via Bluetooth, which is not an option in P8.
Please share with me anything you know about the SIM card and the internet. US friends, my question is for Canada only.

 

[blitzswede]

Hi All, some say there is no SIM card in the P8. Some say three months data included. There is no information on the Volvo website. My dealer showed me a document for accessing the modem. It buried in the trunk behind/below the back seats. 1.5h labour to access it. There is a SIM card holder near the cabin light switches. Nobody knows what it is.
In my previous gas engine XC40 I always used my phone's internet via Bluetooth, which is not an option in P8.
Please share with me anything you know about the SIM card and the internet. US friends, my question is for Canada only.

In Canada, as in USA, OTA updates are included at no extra charge ("free") for as long as the car is under warranty, which is 4 years. OTA updates are delivered via the car's onboard cellular modem/connection, so that too is covered for 4 years. This was confirmed to me by my dealer. As Chris from Volvo clarified some time ago in an other post on this forum (and where it diverges from an ICE XC40), the P8 does not need, nor have, a SIM card.

 

[BainbridgeIsland]

But it does have a SIM slot up by the light switches, as @burak points out. Currently empty on my US-based P8. I presume this would be used after the 4-year period expires, to let us use our own cellular data plans?

 

[BainbridgeIsland]

Actually I bet the empty SIM slot will be required to have an in-car wifi hotspot - whenever they get around to enabling that in the future. Car software/updates are one thing - but I doubt Google/Volvo wants to pay for unlimited free data on your (and all your passengers') phones while in the car. It makes sense that hotspot data will be on your own dime (and your own SIM card).

 

[ColoradoNative]

When the 4 years of free LTE is up, I plan to configure my current phone (whatever that may be) to be a mobile WiFi hotspot, and configure the P8 to access the internet through it. Hopefully it won't max-out the hotspot quota each month.

FWIW, on Samsung Galaxy phones you can configure a routine that enables/disables the mobile WiFi whenever a specific Bluetooth device connects/disconnects - in this case the car.

I did this for the last few years in our minivan, in which I had installed an Android-based Head unit.

 

[Homer]

It is important to remember that most Google Android apps use very little data.

Google GPS can be used 5 hour per day for a month and still not consume 1 GB of data

Sirius streaming, used 5 hours per day, would be about 2 GB per month.

Based on most driving habits...it is hard to imagine using over 1-2 GB per month.

 

[Welland canada recharge]

When at home the car connects to my WIFI - now when I leave the neighbourhood it disconnects from my WiFi but does not connect to a regular LTE network - how can I reset this? Is there a magic solution to get hooked up to a non wifi network? Need to be able to do this in order to finalize the ability to have all the current functionality of VOC.
Thanks in advance.

 

[340driver]

On my last car a 2018 XC60, VOC which uses the main modem was free for 4 years and then could be renewed by paying a monthly fee of around $10. We also had an extra sim slot down in the pax foot well area similar to our present slot around overhead light switches in which we could install our own sim card that used a separate modem and which AT&T gave us a free 6 month card to use (promotional) which I used for automatic d/l of map updates and highway traffic info ( for some odd reason this is still working today even though I never renewed after 6 months with AT&T). I say all this because I can't help thinking the Recharge seems to be setup the same way and maybe this is how it will work once everything gets working properly and I live in the Toronto area where we don't have AT&T but I believe our Rogers Lte is partnered with.