Volvo EX90 Review (2024-present)

What is the Volvo EX90?

The EX90 is the car that many Volvo fans have been waiting a long time for. This is a large, luxurious seven-seater SUV in the same mould as the Volvo XC90, one of the Scandinavian company’s most beloved models of recent years, but with an all-electric powertrain that’ll see this type of large Volvo into the next generation of motoring.

Fans of the XC90 needn't worry: that model continues in Volvo’s line-up in a heavily revised form, offered exclusively with plug-in hybrid power. That means that the EX90 is there to complement the XC90, rather than replace it.

That won’t stop you drawing parallels between the two, though. Both take up a similar amount of space on the road and have a similar amount of space inside - so expect impressive practicality - while both have cool design and a plush, stylish feel. Both also have an emphasis on luxury kit and safety, too, even if on that score, the new car has its older sibling significantly outgunned from a technology point of view.

To begin with, the EX90 is only available in super-powerful Twin Motor all-wheel drive form, with two power outputs on offer. The regular Twin Motor has 402bhp, while the Twin Motor Performance version has 510bhp. Enough to be getting on with, then. It’s also available exclusively in one top-end trim level with all the bells and whistles provided as standard. Later on, we expect more humble trim levels to become available, along with less maniacal Single Motor powertrains.

In terms or rivals, there aren’t a great deal of direct ones. The Mercedes EQS SUV is an all-electric luxury SUV with seven seats, and the forthcoming electric Range Rover will be, too. The Kia EV9 may not have the badge appeal of these two, but it arguably feels like the EX90’s most direct competition.

Large electric prestige SUVs such as the Audi Q8 e-tron and BMW iX will also be considered rivals, even though they’re not available with seven seats. The same goes for the Polestar 3, which actually shares the EX90’s platform, batteries, electric motors, and pretty much everything else from a mechanical perspective.

How practical is it?

All versions of the EX90 have a couple of things in common in this area: they’re all massive, and they all have seven seats. You’d expect an impressive level of practicality, then, and for the most part, the EX90 delivers.

Obviously, the front seats have plenty of space, as front seats always do, although even with the height adjustment of the chairs set to its lowest, the seating position still feels very perched up in relation to the floor of the car. Some will like this, but others might find that it feels a little odd.

Move to the second row, and again, you’ll find plenty in the way of headroom and legroom, giving tall folk the space to stretch. The middle seat isn’t quite as wide as those on either side, but it’s wide enough to be comfortable, and there’s a completely flat floor in front of it, meaning plenty of foot space. In Ultra models, you can also specify that middle seat with a clever integrated child booster as a no-cost option.

The third-row chairs rise up electrically from the boot floor. There’s just about enough room for an adult to fit back there if those in the middle row donate a bit of their legroom by sliding their seats forward a smidge, but you’ll only be able to hack it for short journeys. Kids should be okay for longer stints, though.

Open up the standard powered tailgate, and with all seven of the seats in place, you’ll find decent boot space of 310 litres when loaded to the glass line, where the retractable load cover sits. Hit the buttons in the boot to lower the third-row seats, and the boot measures 655 litre up to the windows, a very useful amount of space. Drop the middle row of seats - which happens in a versatile 40/20/40 split - and you get 1,040 litres of space up to the window line, while loading to the roof will allow you to take 1,915 litres of stuff. What’s more, all the folded seats lie flush with each other, leaving you with a flat and level load floor. There are even buttons in the boot for raising and lowering air suspension to make loading easier.

And charging cable storage? Well, those can travel in the large storage area under the boot floor, or in the 34-litre compartment under the bonnet.

What’s it like to drive?

The high-spec Ultra versions of the EX90 come as standard with four-corner air suspension, complete with adaptive dampers. We suspect that when more modest powertrains and trim levels join the range later on, this will be joined by the availability of passive steel-spring suspension, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.

The high-tech suspension has two settings, named Soft and Firm, aimed at prioritising comfort or agility, according to your mood or the prevailing driving situation. Both of these have their flaws, however.

Select Soft, and your initial impression is that it does exactly what it says on the tin. There’s quite a lot of vertical body movement as you move along the road, giving the floaty, wafty feel you might expect from a large luxury SUV. However, you’d also expect that floatiness to give the suspension the ability to smother lumps and bumps in the road like they’re not even there, and it simply doesn’t. Some of them are dealt with well enough that they don’t cause offence, but others - particularly smaller, sharper, high-frequency ones - give the EX90’s ride a surprisingly unsettled and trembly feel. Not only that, but find yourself on a road that undulates even a little bit, and it might not take long before the vertical body movement we mentioned earlier has you and your passengers feeling a tad queasy.

Predictably, selecting the Firm setting does tighten up the body control quite a bit, making things feel more tied-down. However, Firm mode also amplifies that trembly, unsettled feel, so that it’s more severe and you feel it more of the time.

Even in Firm mode, the EX90 is certainly not a car that you want to be throwing into corners with abandon. It does rein in body roll better than Soft mode does, but either way, there’s simply too much mass here (it weighs 2.7 tonnes even in its lightest form) for the big Volvo to feel anything other than cumbersome and unwieldy when changing direction. In fairness, the strong grip means it does a good job of hanging on if you enter a corner a little too quickly, but that’s still something that you’ll only ever do by accident, rather than intentionally.

That colossal mass can also be felt when you’re hard on the brakes and a lot of foot force is needed to get the car to pull up or stop in a hurry. That’s the case with the vast majority of large EVs, though, in fairness.

Performance certainly isn’t in short supply in either of the two Twin Motor versions that are offered to begin with. The regular Twin Motor has a combined power output of 402bhp, while the Twin Motor Performance ups that to 510bhp. The former will race from 0-62mph in 5.9 seconds, while the latter takes just 4.9 seconds. Both have a top speed that’s limited to 112mph.

In terms of sensation, both are effortlessly and indecently quick. Even the Twin Motor has more pace than you’ll ever need, so the only reason we can see for upgrading to the Twin Motor Performance is for pub bragging rights, and that’s a very expensive way of getting them. Once less powerful - not to mention cheaper - Single Motor variants arrive later on down the line, we’re sure that they’ll have enough performance to satisfy the vast majority of customers, most of whom won’t need or want to have their socks blown off.

What is beyond criticism with the EX90, though, is its refinement. There’s barely a sound from the outside world thanks to the near-silent powertrain and the excellent suppression of wind- and road noise, leaving you to while away the miles in a calm and relaxed manner.

Technology, equipment and infotainment

We’ll begin this section by quoting Volvo’s own media blurb: “The EX90 is part of a new generation of fully electric, software-defined Volvo cars." Note that phrase: ‘software-defined’. Seldom has a more accurate description of a car ever been used. To some people, this will be an utter delight. To others, less so.

Initially, the EX90 is only available in top-spec Ultra trim in the UK market, which comes absolutely loaded with kit, including a massive 14.5-inch touchscreen control system in the centre of the dashboard. It’s been developed alongside Google, which means that the navigation is powered by Google Maps, you have access to Google’s voice assistant, and you can download a variety of different apps directly to the car using Google Play store. That’s precisely the manner of functionality that will delight tech-heads and phone-fans alike, and these folk will also be drawn in by the system’s large, glossy screen, crystal-clear graphics and slick animations.

And that’s all well and good, until you actually try to use the thing. Frankly, we bore even ourselves when we constantly go on and on about car touchscreens being inherently more distracting to use on the move than physical switches and buttons, and that too many touchscreen systems are becoming far too complicated to find your way around easily. Well, in terms of complexity, the EX90’s system takes things to a whole new level.

Look around the EX90’s cabin for switches, and you’ll find almost none. There’s a volume dial on the central console, window switches on doors, while the steering wheel spokes have cruise control buttons on the left side and arrow selectors on the right: more on those in a moment. This means that almost all the car’s myriad functions have to be operated through the screen - ventilation, entertainment, car settings, the lot - and these functions are compartmentalised into countless menus and submenus that are virtually impossible to find your way through efficiently.

And even when you know where you’re going, operating too many of the functions is hopelessly convoluted. Here’s an example: as an experiment, we counted up how many screen inputs it took to get from the regular navigation map to the settings for the air suspension, change the setting from Soft to Firm (or vice versa), and then go back to the map. Now, let’s bear in mind that with most such systems, a physical button would do the job in one or two presses. With the Volvo’s touchscreen? We counted no fewer than six taps and one very long vertical swipe, taking in one root menu and three submenus. And that’s after several practice runs, meaning we knew exactly what route we were taking through the menus, which most folk won’t. And that’s also not counting the several taps and swipes that didn’t register, as they often don’t due to the screen’s rather hit-and-miss sensitivity.

Here’s something else that’s bonkers: there’s no manual catch or physical electric control for adjusting either the steering column, or the angle of your door mirrors. For both, you need to find the appropriate screen from within the gazillions of on-screen menus, select the thing you want to move, and then use those arrow selectors we mentioned on the right-hand side of the steering wheel to perform the movement. It’s overcomplicating the very simplest of tasks, and it’s all so needless.

With our rant finally at an end (although trust us, we could go on!), let’s talk a bit about the standard equipment provided with Ultra trim. Suffice it to say that it’s considerable, but then again, at this money, it jolly well should be.

The standard roster on Ultimate trim includes 22-inch alloy wheels, heated and power folding door mirrors, adaptive high-beam headlights, automatic lights and wipers, a fixed panoramic sunroof, front- and rear parking sensors, a 360-degree parking camera, a power tailgate, keyless entry and start, soft-close doors, a head-up display, ambient lighting, four-zone climate control, powered adjustment and heating for the front seats and steering wheel, massaging front seats, and heated seats in the middle row.

Of course, that all-singing infotainment system supports Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and DAB radio, and toy also get two USB-C sockets in every seating row. There’s also a rather splendid 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkins sound system with 1,610 watts of clout.

Volvo EX90 running costs

Both Twin Motor versions of the EX90 use the same massive battery pack. Total capacity stands at 111kWh, while 107kWh of that capacity is usable (all EV batteries keep a few cells in reserve to help prolong battery life). Official WLTP figures say that both versions return an identical combined range of 374 miles, although don’t expect to get so many miles of range in the real world, especially on long motorway jaunts or in cold weather, neither of which electric cars like. To help with the latter, though, the EX90 comes with a standard heat pump to provide more efficient cabin heating in cold temperatures, helping to preserve the car’s range.

Charging up such a large battery is not the work of a moment, though. Attempt to do it on a three-pin domestic plug, and it’ll be a slightly comical 45 hours before your battery is full. Do as most EV owners do, though, and get yourself a 7.4kW home wallbox charger, and that charge time is hacked down to a much more palatable 15 hours. Either way, the cost of that home charge will be around thirty quid, assuming that the cost of your domestic electricity sits at the UK national average. However, make use of one of the many domestic tariffs out there that allow EV drivers to charge up their cars overnight on drastically discounted off-peak power, and you’ll easily cut that cost in half, maybe more.

Conversely, you can multiply that cost by three or more on those occasions when you need to use public DC rapid chargers, which is why we’d only recommend doing so in emergencies. At least your pain will be short-lived: the EX90 supports DC rapid charging at up to 250kW, so if you can find a powerful enough fast-charging station running at the advertised rate, then a 10-80% top-up can be delivered in just 30 minutes.

Of course, these minor discrepancies in charging costs will pale into complete insignificance compared to what you’ll pay for the EX90 in the first place, because it’s an extremely expensive car. Right now, starting prices for the Twin Motor Ultra stand at just over £96,000, while the Performance variant breaks the six-figure barrier at £101,000.

Volvo EX90 reliability

Reliability issues always take a bit of time to come to light, and with the EX90 being a completely brand-spanking-new model, there simply hasn’t yet been time for any data to emerge, if indeed it ever will.

The What Car? Reliability Survey paints a reasonably positive picture of Volvo’s reliability credentials, though. The brand finished 12th in the manufacturer standings of the latest edition, from a field of 31 carmakers, which is a solid enough performance. It’s also positive that the firm’s only electric offering included in the study, the XC40 Recharge, placed 3rd out of 16 models in the Electric SUV category. Of course, the EX90 is based on an entirely different platform, but it’s a positive indication nevertheless.

What’s less positive is Volvo’s decidedly underwhelming warranty. The three-year, 60,000-mile cover you get is pretty much the bare minimum that any manufacturer can get away with these days, and looks especially disappointing given that you get seven years/100,000 miles on the Kia EV9, which is very similar in concept to the Volvo EX90, and is also much, much cheaper. The battery of the EX90, meanwhile, is covered for eight years or 100,000 miles.