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The good and bad about the 2025 Volvo EX90, the company’s new electric SUV

Some of the EX90’s features won’t be enabled until next year.

Jonathan M. Gitlin – Sep 3, 2024 3:00 am | 176

After launching some smaller and cheaper electric vehicles, it was time for Volvo to push the boat out with a flagship SUV, the EX90. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

An early convert to the idea of an all-electrified lineup, Volvo has taken a slightly different tack to most other automakers as it electrifies its product range. Where most would start off with a big and expensive electric vehicle first, it did the opposite, starting out with small and affordable. That means it’s now time for a flagship EV, an all-new three-row SUV called the EX90, which we’ve driven ahead of US deliveries toward the end of this year.

That’s later than Volvo planned, and as you’ll see, some EX90 features have fallen even further behind and will need to be enabled via software update in the future. Because while the EX90 is a good demonstration of a new, tech-forward approach to car design, it’s also the latest example of automakers adopting the “minimal viable product” approach from the tech sector.

Volvo has developed an all-new platform for larger EVs, which the EX90 will share with other brands within the Geely group, notably the Polestar 3 we drove a few weeks ago. The Volvo is a little longer than the Polestar, and unlike the SUV from the upstart startup, the EX90 is a three-row, with seats for either six or seven depending on whether you opt for a bench or a pair of captain’s chairs for the middle row.

Volvo EX90 driving — Most EX90s will spend their days in suburban traffic, and it copes with that quite well, particularly if you optioned the Ultra pack and its massaging front seats. Credit: James Lipman/Volvo

The good

The SUV has a handsome, well-proportioned shape with some subtly creased angles, particularly around the rear wheels, although the roof-mounted lidar unit has led to comparisons with a London taxicab, and some of the test cars blended a little too effectively with the dry Southern Californian landscape courtesy of their beige paint. As we have come to expect from Volvo, there are a plethora of interesting design details inside and out, with plenty of storage nooks, grocery bag hooks, cup holders, and USB-C ports.

There are two powertrain options on offer with the EX90 for now, a $79,995 Twin Motor version with a combined 402 hp (300 kW) and 568 lb-ft (770 Nm) or the $84,995 Twin Motor Performance, which raises the power output to 509 hp (380 kW) and 671 lb-ft (910 Nm). In both cases, the rear electric motor is more powerful, with clutch-based torque vectoring that also allows the rear drive unit to completely disconnect the rear wheels for better coasting.

Both variants use the same 111 kWh capacity (gross, 107 kW useable) battery pack, sufficient for 310 miles (499 km) of range according to the EPA test cycle. Recharging the pack takes as little as 30 minutes to go from 10 to 80 percent state of charge with a DC fast charger (peaking at 250 kW), or 15 hours to charge from 0 to 100 percent SoC with a 32 A level 2 charger.

Volvo brought only the EX90 Twin Motor Performance to Newport Coast for us to drive, and the cars were optioned with the $4,350 Ultra pack, which adds active air suspension and massaging seats, as well as wireless phone charging. The standard Plus pack is already very well-equipped, but we’ll need to drive a few miles in one to see what effect standard coil springs and hydraulic dampers have on its ride.

The adaptive air springs did a lot to hide this SUV’s considerable 5,688-lb (2,580 kg) curb weight. And the ride quality was notably good, particularly at highway speeds. The flip side was not-so-great body control over low-speed obstacles like potholes, road construction plates, and so on; side-to-side motions could be better controlled to stop the seat bolsters from performing percussive maintenance on your kidneys. You can also feel the torque vectoring at work, particularly in slow corners, adding a little extra agility to this big SUV.

Our test EX90 was also equipped with the larger 22-inch wheels—these drop the range to 300 miles (482 km), but slightly unhelpfully, the wheels were shod in European-spec summer tires. That’s helpful for journalists from that part of the world who have also been driving the new Volvo out there, but it’s less relevant for North American cars that will run on all-seasons. Given these constraints, I’m not sure how relevant it is to know that my car averaged 2.8 miles/kWh (22.2 kWh/100 km)—especially since some of that time was spent with Performance mode turned on, which gives you all 509 hp, all the time.

Although Volvo has limited the top speed of all its cars to 112 mph (180 km/h) for some time now, it hasn’t similarly limited acceleration, and you can reach 60 mph (98 km/h) in 4.7 seconds. But the first bit of throttle travel—“tip in,” as it’s also known—delivers a lot of torque to the wheels, and if you have passengers along for the ride, the backs of their heads will be getting to know the headrests quite intimately.

It’s still more than quick enough without pushing that Performance mode icon on the big touchscreen, and it has better throttle mapping that won’t make your self-loading cargo fly back every time you accelerate. For those who like the option, there’s a very well-calibrated one-pedal driving option, and with one pedal isn’t active, the EX90 coasts well, thanks in part to the clutches disconnecting the rear wheels from their drive unit.

The bad

As is unfortunately becoming too common on first drive events, the EX90s we tested aren’t quite the final product. It’s a very advanced vehicle, with the latest and most powerful onboard car computers from Nvidia and Qualcomm controlling everything from vehicle safety to infotainment.

Volvo EX90 lidar and sensors — On top, a Luminar LiDAR Scanner. Below it, optical sensors. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

But the Luminar lidar unit mounted above the windscreen is just gathering data for Volvo engineers for now—the OEM still has to finish its systems integration to tie it into the EX90’s suite of advanced driver assistance systems. Once that happens, EX90s should be able to see other road users, including pedestrians, out to 820 feet (250 m), in both day and night. But only sometime next year following a software update. Several other ADAS features—front cross traffic alerts and braking, straight crossing path, and curve speed assistant—are also delayed.

Similarly, the EX90’s ability to charge your house or schedule its own charging at optimum times isn’t ready yet, nor is plug-and-charge, where the EV handles billing and authentication when you connect to a charger rather than requiring the driver to use an app.

And neither Apple CarPlay nor Android Auto are ready yet, either, although they will come to the EX90 with a software update, Volvo said.

Tech companies have long been comfortable pushing a product out the door before it’s ready with the knowledge (or hope, at least) that future software patches will add in the missing features. Unfortunately, with the advent of the software-defined vehicle, it appears car buyers will have to get used to the same approach.

Then there’s the EX90’s third row. This is one of the SUV’s selling points, but it’s cramped in that last row, even by the standards of seven-seat SUVs. Small children might be happy back there after an hour, but anyone larger will start to complain, particularly if they have to share the row with another passenger.

The ugly

While some features were missing from the EX90, others were simply not working properly, at least on our test car. Volvo has moved to a phone-as-a-key solution for the EX90, which uses ultra wideband (like Apple’s AirTags) to detect the proximity of its owner (there’s also an NFC card as a backup). Unfortunately, our EX90 had trouble detecting the presence of the phone and at one point refused to start, requiring a technician to break out a laptop to give it instructions.

Similar gremlins affected the active driving assistant, which wouldn’t engage on some roads but would on others; the capacitive sensors on the steering wheel, which failed to register I was holding it; and maybe at one point the air suspension, which made the car curtsey briefly, dipping its nose down and then up while stopped at a traffic light. Those were all annoyances to varying degrees, but talking with colleagues at the event, our test car appeared to be something of a lemon-flavored outlier.

Volvo EX90 parked under a tree — I liked much of what I found with the EX90, but it needs a little longer in the oven. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

Presumably, those bugs will be gone by the time customer deliveries start sometime in Q4 of this year. And I’m interested in revisiting the EX90 later next year once the lidar is functional, the ADAS is fully operational, and the tires are US-spec. But unless the need for a third row is not optional, it’s hard to ignore the Polestar 3, built alongside the EX90 in South Carolina, which is several thousand dollars cheaper and much more fun to drive.

Listing image: Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

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