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By Jonathan Crouch

Volvo's EX90 is a large seven-seat luxury EV crossover that redefines its brand's future. Jonathan Crouch takes a look...

Ten Second Reviewword count: 74

The EX90 is a large full-battery EV Crossover that takes Volvo into a new era. As the company puts it, 'it's a statement for where we are - and where we're going', combining the brand's own engineering advances with 'the best technology from the world's best technologists'. This SUV is also one of the few large super-luxury EVs to be able to seat seven. It's an ambitious statement of intent from the Sino-Swedish brand.

Backgroundword count: 210

What does the future really look like for large luxury cars? Various brands have told us, but none of them are approaching that future quite like Volvo, the company proudly styling itself as 'a pioneer in the protection of people and planet'. A claim embodied most clearly in this, it's very first EV to sit on a dedicated electric platform, the EX90. Ultimately, this will be the replacement for the XC90 large SUV model line that saved Volvo at the turn-of-the-century, though that combustion model will continue for several years yet. The future for flagship Volvos though, lies with EVs produced off the parent Geely Group's advanced SPA2 architecture, a platform already used by the EX90's close cousin, the Polestar 3, which shares the same drive system and much else. The EX90 differs from that car though, by its provision of three seating rows. And in its standard (rather than optional) inclusion of the so-called 'Lidar' package of sensors and cameras that Volvo claims will deliver a whole new era of safety and pave the way to a safer solution for fully autonomous driving. The car will be built at the company's US plant in Charleston - and eventually at Chengdu in China too, with both plants rated carbon neutral.

Engines and Tech Specword count: 269

The powertrain on offer here is of the Twin Motor All-Wheel Drive sort, with a choice of two output levels. Standard models offer 402bhp, while 'Performance' variants up that to 510bhp. In both cases, power comes from a 111kWh battery, which delivers a range of 364 miles in the base model and 360 miles in the 'Performance' version. Lower-powered variants will follow and as with all Volvos, top speed is limited to 112mph. The 62mph from rest sprint takes 5.9s in the base Twin Motor model, improved to 4.9s by the 'Performance' version. All of this we've seen before in the Polestar 3. The EX90 though, gets a standard feature that is only optional on that car, the 'Lidar sensor'. That gives you a combination of powerful silicon chips, sensors and Volvo-developed perception software so powerful that the brand refers to it as 'a digital seatbelt'. And promises it'll reduce accidents involving death and serious injury by 20%. The Lidar sensor also provides everything necessary for this Volvo to drive itself fully autonomously, as soon as worldwide legislation permits it. We've heard that before of course, but Volvo wasn't sure that earlier autonomous drive systems could match its exacting safety standards. So it's developed its own autonomous drive set-up, with a completely new level of hardware, software and processing power; including Nvidia processors and Qualcomm CPUs combining to process up to 280 trillion operations per second. Forget performance figures: these are the kinds of stats that are really going to matter in luxury cars going forward. This one nails them more directly than any rival has done to date.

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