Volvo: XL electric luxury in Swedish
Volvo is electrifying its top-of-the-range SUV with the EX90. The large SUV ranks well ahead of the competition in terms of driving pleasure.
As always, Volvo focuses on quality, safety and high value - the Swedes have made no compromises in this regard since the takeover by the Chinese Geely Group. Impressive proof of this is the new EX90: the electric counterpart to the previous flagship XC90 is the most luxurious, most comfortable and safest Volvo of all time.
The Swedes really come up trumps with the new luxury electric car: The 5.04 meter long seven-seater looks magnificent in the usual discreetly luxurious Volvo style - inside and out. It offers a princely amount of space, not to mention the completely fold-away third row of seats, and is equipped to a high standard - with purely vegan materials with a high proportion of recycled materials, of course. With all seven seats upright, there is still room for 310 liters of luggage in the rear - that is more than most seven-seaters on the European market offer. If the two rearmost seats are folded down, which is done fully electrically at the touch of a button, the load volume more than doubles. If all seats except the two front seats are folded down, almost two cubic meters of cargo can be stowed in the elegant Swede.
The cockpit is ultra-modern, with a large touchscreen in portrait format above the center console for the Android infotainment system, a small info screen behind the steering wheel and a large head-up display in the windshield. However, the fact that you even have to adjust the exterior mirrors and climate functions on the touchscreen is a bad thing - Tesla introduced this bad habit, and unfortunately it is now increasingly being adopted because buttons are simply not stylish. This makes setting basic functions tedious, which causes distraction while driving. At least the EX90 helps to avoid accidents with a semi-autonomous driving system. There is even a lidar on board, which sits under a cab sign-like hood above the windshield. Although the system currently only collects data, the Swede is already equipped for fully autonomous driving functions, should they one day become legal.
The ride comfort, on the other hand, is beyond reproach. Thanks to the optional dual-chamber air suspension, the EX90 rolls smoothly over bumps of all kinds and seems to literally float over the asphalt. Nevertheless, the Swede feels precise in bends and only rolls to a tolerable extent. The drive range also gives no cause for complaint: at the top is the Twin Motor Performance AWD all-wheel drive version with a whopping 380 kW/517 hp, which sprints to 100 km/h in under five seconds. Below this is the Twin Motor AWD with 300 kW/400 hp, also with all-wheel drive and an acceleration time of six seconds. The front-wheel drive entry-level model delivers 205 kW/279 hp and reaches 100 km/h in 8.4 seconds.
The two all-wheel drive versions are equipped with a 111 kWh battery and thus achieve WLTP standard ranges of up to 619 kilometers. The base model has a slightly smaller battery with 104 kWh capacity, which enables up to 580 kilometers on a single charge. Volvo has dispensed with an 800-volt system, which would be available from parent company Geely: However, the EX90 makes full use of its 400-volt platform and sucks up to 250 kW at the fast-charging station.
Volvo has done everything right with the new EX90, and this will certainly be rewarded in Switzerland, where the big Swede wants to shake up the luxury E-SUV segment from now on at a starting price of 94,950 francs. Above all, however, the model is likely to generate large numbers in the USA, where the EX90 also rolls off the production line. And China will soon be added as a production location - Volvo can also expect large volumes there.
