2025 Volvo EX90: A low-key luxury electric SUV
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@Dr Gitlin messin' with me too early
Also, the lidar phone damage thing is interesting and seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen and should be easily won by phone owners one would think.
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The lidar hump looks odd in the head-on photo, but I can't see it in the profile shots. I wonder if it disappears to the eye after a few weeks of ownership.
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I can't imagine these monstrous, awful-looking touch screens dominating the dash will age well. I am hoping in 10 years we look back and think "yeah, I am glad that's over." The interior of this car is gorgeous, and then there's this massive ugly tablet bolted right smack in the middle of everything.
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Jokes on you, in the future it will be the hole dashboard and no steering wheel, so it will be one giant touch screen.
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yeah the low-effort HMI integration fad is fucking awful. One of the factors in why I bought the car that I did is that they made an effort to integrate it. I've got a litany of complaints about the car but the interior layout and physical design isn't one of them (other than the piano black nonsense which is an act of terrorism but at least I got it wrapped… and the touch controls on the wheel).
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Does the EX90 still do the obnoxious thing the other Volvos do where you cannot unplug the charger without first locking and then unlocking the doors? I get the logic that you want to avoid someone walking up to your car and removing the charger, but if I leave it unlocked in my garage it makes it a pain to unplug and go.
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In after the first through third, and before the subsequent dozen, posters determined to grind their personal axe about large touchscreens, a topic about which we're all delighted to get angry para or two in this year of our lord 2025.
Anyway, It's nice looking. Pity it got delayed so long. I think the headlights probably seemed cleverer in the design phase than they'll actually be in person, and the chonky pixel aesthetic isn't coherent with the extremely clean and minimalist (almost too much so) exterior design. It looks very much like the now exceedingly venerable and twice-refreshed XC90, which also looks good, so this design language will age well if for no other reason than it hasn't evolved much for ten years.
I'm not sure brand cachet is enough to make this seem like a better three-row EV buy than an EV9 or Ioniq9, and I don't see quite what the extra cash buys you aside from a Volvo badge.
Anyway, It's nice looking. Pity it got delayed so long. I think the headlights probably seemed cleverer in the design phase than they'll actually be in person, and the chonky pixel aesthetic isn't coherent with the extremely clean and minimalist (almost too much so) exterior design. It looks very much like the now exceedingly venerable and twice-refreshed XC90, which also looks good, so this design language will age well if for no other reason than it hasn't evolved much for ten years.
I'm not sure brand cachet is enough to make this seem like a better three-row EV buy than an EV9 or Ioniq9, and I don't see quite what the extra cash buys you aside from a Volvo badge.
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Ooh nice, that extra high-speed memory will really help the responsiveness of the infotainment system.
Or maybe you meant cachet.
That's silly; a fancy-pants brand-name won't speed up the touchscreen at all.
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“ …. 310 miles (498 km) when fitted with 21-inch wheels, or 300 miles (482 km) when fitted with 21-inch wheels.”
Seems to me that one of those references to 21-inch wheels should be to some different number of inches ?
edit : fixed now
Seems to me that one of those references to 21-inch wheels should be to some different number of inches ?
edit : fixed now
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Yeah. I assume the first slightly longer range should be on smaller wheels. Probably, 20 inch given the small impact on range and easiest typo to make but could be 19 or 18 too.
That should be software updatable. Our Leaf actually has a switch to control that so you can set it to locked, unlocked or auto which locks it until it's done charging. It pretty much always stays in the unlocked position as we charge almost exclusively at home. I'm pretty sure you can unlock it with the keyfob too I haven't actually done that.
I imagine a location driven automatic behavior would be nice. Unlocked at home and locked or auto everywhere else.
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Maybe, but the Volvo interior looks far more pleasant than the hostile black Audi mess.
IMHO of course, YMMV.
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I like black because of fewer reflections of the interior on the glass, but that's just a personal taste thing.
I wouldn't be unhappy with the overall Volvo interior but the display being built into the dash properly.
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araczynski
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I think I'm allergic to the standard box SUV trope, they all make me think of station wagons boinking minivans.
For the last decade the only things I have been able to pay for are the coupish crossover SUVs, FX50/X6M/etc.
For the last decade the only things I have been able to pay for are the coupish crossover SUVs, FX50/X6M/etc.
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No doubt about it, it must be great having a luxury car on loan for a week. But it seems to me that the big story in electric vehicle adoption in the US is well underway and largely ignored. The growth is not in 3 row luxury SUVs, or even pragmatic short range 2 door commuters, it's in scooters and e-bikes. For every EX90 that gets sold dozens of new scooters and e-bikes will hit the streets, a phenomenon that was unheard of ten years ago.
Which scooter has the best connected features? Which e-bike is plagued with reliability issues? As a regular Ars reader I have no idea. It's a shame.
Which scooter has the best connected features? Which e-bike is plagued with reliability issues? As a regular Ars reader I have no idea. It's a shame.
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There are 6 usb ports (2 per row). I agree faster charging or an AC outlet would be nice.
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A handsome vehicle that is somewhere in the neighborhood of being $10k more expensive than the top-spec XC90. Would you get that back in lower TCO or is that a fantasy because of the steeper EV depreciation?
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Damn it: the interior of your Audi gives me serious TIE fighter vibes...
and I want it
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It doesn't fully solve the problem, but you only have to hit unlock to get the charger to release.
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Keeping the screen up in the driver's natural sight line is way more important than catering to the subjective aesthetic preference that the screen be inset into the dash.
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Sounds like you're not even slightly interested in this car then, which begs the question why you're bothering to comment on it at all. You can't possibly think your personal bias against the crossover form factor is interesting to anybody.
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The crazy thing is that's the only colour option offered for the vehicle. There's white, two grays, three blacks, and beige. Supposedly blue and red, but they're so dark you can't tell except in direct bright sunlight.
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Cameras are everywhere these days, what happens when it starts damaging cameras on other cars in traffic?
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I can see that being an issue on models that combine LIDAR and a telephoto for meeting the longer distance automatic braking algorithms. Opposing oncoming lanes, like protected left turns, would be the key hazard circumstance between vehicles. Also makes it unsafe to look at any highway with magnification, probably binoculars. I wonder how the safety standards for these lasers are being evaluated...
Absurdity. Saturated color options are necessary! Or the desaturation will continue until dealers stop having difficulty selling off-lease vehicles that aren't totally generic.
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Preach. I'm so tired of the boring greyscale shit. I want a "fuck you and fuck your retinas" orange or green or purple or blue available when I buy a car. think "Lamborghini" shades.
I bought the Audi in white because the choices were white, black, grey, and a very dark very boring shade of blue that might as well be black except in direct sunlight.
I would've paid an extra thousand bucks for a bright metallic paint. I will not pay $5000 for someone to put a temporary fucking wrap on it though.
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Toyota delivered a very FYAFYR Orange a couple years ago on TRD trucks. The Tundra was like staring at Betelgeuse with naked eyes from a couple AUs out - overwhelmingly huge and eye-searingly orange.
That said, my dad owned a Saab in international safety orange in the '70s and we've only backslid since then, so Sweden needs to get funky again goddamnit
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It should be, but Volvo software is ... not great so they didn't give you that option. It is really annoying, especially compared to a Tesla where you can just walk up, unplug and go.
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That is an interesting point. What happens when it faces off with a Tesla RoboTaxi? Does it blind the poor thing?
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yessss that is the dream. I saw a nazi polygon this morning on the way to work that was wrapped in lamborghini green and it made me actually smile a little bit despite myself.
I'm reminded of a quote from The Rock: "Most of the time I live in a glass jar and live a very uneventful life. I drive a Volvo, a beige one. But what I'm dealing with here is one of the deadliest substances the earth has ever known so whaddya say you cut me some friggin' slack‽"
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It's interesting to see how Volvo's iterating dash designs on the ev models. There's a pretty clear through line of EX40->EX30->EX90. For my taste they haven't quite nailed it but I think their designers are onto something.
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My wife has a 2020 XC90 hybrid, and that is indeed annoying about it. (Though you don't need to lock-unlock it - just hit unlock even if it's already unlocked).
I have a 2022 C40 BEV, and that does it much better: there's a button right next to the socket to unlock the charger. I can't imagine Volvo has backslid on this one!
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Don't know about you, but the middle of the car is not where I look when I'm driving. Also, a vertically oriented screen means looking down more to see the lower half than a wide screen integrated into the dash. I personally don't think it is subjective.
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Hopefully it only blinds red light camera traps and police lidar guns.
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