Electric SUVs are a big trend right now, and it’s probably not what you think. It’s not a longer range. It’s not more advanced battery construction, super-fast charging, or even NACS chips. No, the real trend in electric SUVs is delayed. Porsche’s electric Macan Like its sibling, the Audi Q6 E-Tron, it took its sweet time going into production, which was delayed by months.
Volvo’s EX90 suffered the same fate. Originally planned Set to hit the market in 2023, it, along with its corporate cousin the Polestar 3, is finally rolling out of Volvo’s manufacturing facility near Charleston, South Carolina. Finally, Volvo let us get behind the wheel of a pre-production model on a test drive to see if it was worth the wait.
Was it? Yes and no, but I’m happy to say it’s mostly yes.
Let’s start with what it is. As the name suggests, the EX90 is the battery-powered counterpart to the brand’s XC90 SUV, the largest in its lineup. Like the XC90, the EX90 is a three-row SUV with seating for six or seven depending on configuration, a big, upright stance and, of course, more safety features than stick-waving.
But Volvo didn’t just take the XC90 out and slap a big battery pack where the engine, exhaust and fuel tank live. It is a special electric vehicle platform, completely new. It has a 111-kilowatt-hour battery pack (107 kWh usable) and a pair of electric motors, one in the rear and one in the front, with all-wheel drive.
Whether you go for the base, $79,995 Plus, or the more luxurious $84,345 Ultra trim, you get the same dual-motor setup that makes 402 horsepower and 568 foot-pounds of torque. If that’s not enough, you can spend another $5,000 for the Twin Motor Performance option, which turns the wick up to 510 horsepower and 671 lb-ft of torque. Depending on the options you choose, both versions are rated for 310 miles in EPA testing.
Interestingly, the two models have exactly the same engines and other related equipment. So what do you get for an extra $5,000? A different set of software and a small white badge on the back that says ‘TWIN PERFORMANCE’. Welcome to the future.
Internal
At six feet tall, I could barely squeeze into the third row. There was no room for my feet or knees. The second row was more comfortable, with plenty of headroom, but I still wouldn’t call it spacious, nothing like the generous legroom found in the second row of the BMW iX or even the Hyundai Ioniq 5.
Thankfully, I spent most of my time in the front seats, which is great. Volvo offers a pair of interior fabrics, Dawn Quilted Nordico, which has a leather-like feel, or Tailored Wool Blend, which feels like a higher-quality woven upholstery. My favorite is the last one. These seats offer generous adjustment and a surprisingly thorough massage. Ventilation is the only thing missing, and that’s a bit of a shame.
The rest of the interior is quite neat and clean. The white trim on the charcoal cloth in the car I drove looks fantastic, with the raised grain on the wooden dash insert only letting down the unfortunate chrome bands that run around it.
The highlight of the dash, however, is the 14.5-inch portrait touchscreen that sits upright in the middle. On it, you can access the Android Automotive system, which controls the entirety of the user interface, including the 9.0-inch gauge cluster behind the steering wheel and the projected head-up display.
Volvo’s interface here is similar to what they are starting to offer about five years agobut it is more comprehensive and intuitive to use than before. Google Maps running natively is a great experience, as is being able to do things like adjust car settings via voice with Google Assistant. The inevitable integration of the twins should only make it stronger.
Android Automotive also provides access to numerous media apps, including Tidal, which offers Dolby Atmos streaming. For the first time, Volvo has a sound system that can take advantage of it. The new Bowers & Wilkins system with 25 speakers fills the room with rich, crisp sound. It’s available as part of the Ultra trim, and that alone almost makes the cost of the upgrade worth it over the base EX90.
Driver time
The EX90 I test drive was equipped with the company’s largest 22-inch wheels, which were wrapped in sticky, European-spec spring tires instead of the milder all-season tires that the American EX90s will feature. Despite these two factors, the EX90 offers excellent ride quality.
It was smooth, quiet and comfortable over every freeway junction and the few bits of broken asphalt I could find. Just a hint of wind at highway speeds betrayed the fact that I was moving through space and time, and not just the latter. All of this comes together to make it an even better soundscape for each of those 25 speakers.
The suspension is tuned for compliance, and the EX90 squirms a bit after hitting bigger bumps or the like. But even so, it was still plenty engaging on the tighter, twistier canyon roads. I wouldn’t say it was sharp or necessarily sporty, but it was really fun.
It turns well and has minimal body roll for something so tall, thanks in part to placing the large battery pack on the floor. And, yes, he has a lot of speed. Maybe too much, actually. The gas pedal is a bit sharp, which may have rear-seat passengers with sensitive stomachs turning green. Perhaps another reason to avoid white interiors, beautiful as they are.
The one-pedal drive mode is similarly quite sharp, bringing the EX90 to a complete stop in an instant. If you don’t like it, you can turn it off. When powered down, the EX90 is happy to coast. There is also a third option: Automatic. Here, the car will coast most of the time, but if there is a car in front, it will apply regen more aggressively to maintain distance.
This is just one aspect of the car’s advanced driver systems, which is a bit hit or miss.
Great sensors
The most interesting style of the EX90, a very smart and elegant-looking, but not too modest SUV, is the sensor pod located above the windshield. Inside lives a Luminar Lidar pod that scans the road ahead and creates a 3D dot map of each obstacle. Or, at least, it will.
Right now, a bit of rooftop decor is just that. But Volvo says they will turn on this sensor and start collecting data through a software update next year. In the future, it will begin to better integrate into the car’s adaptive safety system and will basically serve as another reference point to augment other sensors.
What’s out there now looks more like Volvo’s current cars. The Pilot Assist system helps with comprehensive active lane keeping, which means it will keep the car in the center of the lane. Volvo has also added an automatic lane change feature, but you still have to manually activate it by fully depressing the steering wheel. All good enough, but a decided step behind systems available from Ford, General Motors and BMW. I also had some problems while driving, the lane centering system refused to enter secondary roads.
There were other problems. The car uses a UWB (ultra wide range) connection to smartphones for keyless operation, but our car struggled to detect the phone and kept me in an annoying fiddle for several minutes every time I got out of the car. It also had trouble detecting that my hands were on the steering wheel, at one point going so far as to turn off the active steering system because it thought I wasn’t paying attention. (I was.) Finally, the entire active security suite threw errors twice, once requiring a technician with a laptop to fix.
Collection
After all the delays for the car, I have to admit I was expecting a more polished experience. However, I would suggest not holding it against the EX90. I’m sure Volvo’s engineers can fix these issues before the SUVs start showing up at dealerships, which Volvo says will happen by the end of the year.
It’s a bit unfortunate that the active safety kit lags behind the competition, but there’s no doubt Volvo has bigger plans for the EX90. The company didn’t throw that Lidar sensor on the roof just for looks. Those things are expensive.
This brings us to the price. Still, the EX90 starts at $79,995 for the two-motor version with a 310-mile range, which puts it in the same ballpark as the Rivian R1S or Tesla Model X, two other premium three-row SUVs. However, the upcoming Polestar 3, built on the same platform but without the Lidar sensor on the roof and the third row of rear seats, starts at $5,000 less.
Is the Volvo worth the extra cost? We’ll have to wait until we get to sit in its corporate cousin before we can say for sure. Stay tuned for that.
Update, September 3, 2024, 6:01 PM ET: This story has been updated to remove two paragraphs that inaccurately described the dimensions of the EX90 due to a conversion error.
