The XC90 is the ultimate big car for big families who go on big journeys. Will the Kia EV9 be able to lure away some of the Volvo faithful?
WORDS PAUL HORRELL PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD
It’s easy to spout simple dumb cliches about the way different cars are used or the character of their buyers. But I’m confident this is verifiable observation: the Volvo XC90 is the default car for fecund prosperous families. See these tall Scandi barges lined up outside expensive private schools, disgorging well-scrubbed well-spoken children. See them engorged with ski clobber, cruising the A40 Autoroute blanche towards the Alps come February half term. Unsurprisingly, Volvo has no intention of giving up this territory with the arrival of the electric age. The battery powered EX90 is coming soon.
Maybe not soon enough though, because Kia has other ideas and the EV9 is here right now. Boy, you won’t miss it. It is huuuuge. It looks bigger than the Volvo although actually they’re pretty much the same size. We did this test in and around Milton Keynes, a city designed for the automobile, its wide boulevards a simulacrum for Los Angeles. (Only with rain and roundabouts.) Yet even here, negotiating car park ramps and EV charger ranks was a fraught process reliant on the surround cameras. Towns built for the horse and cart are a nightmare for XC90 or EV9. Actually for the EV9 especially because of its crazy long wheelbase. But hey, it’s not just the dimensions that get the EV9 noticed. It looks like a concept car. Chiselled, faceted surfaces and clean detailing evoke some kind of Escalade-after-next.
Pure electric propulsion won’t prevent the Kia finding itself the target of an anti-SUV backlash in circles where that matters. The Volvo – or am I backsliding from observation to cliche? – somehow mostly avoids that sort of disapproval. There’s a studied non-aggression in the big Swedish barges. It’s all about keeping the little ones safe, eh? In other words, it’s possible the Kia, a big seven-seat SUV like the Volvo, with an equally impressive array of safety kit, at the same price, is actually fishing for buyers in a different pond because of differing perceptions more than differing actualities.
But we’re here to examine them as cars, not as psychographic signifiers. They do the same job. Different propulsion, electric for the EV9 versus PHEV for the XC90 Recharge, is just another part of th
