Successor to the XC90 retains seven-seat layout but switches to electric power On sale Late 2023 Price from £96,255
Steve Huntingford Steve.Huntingford@haymarket.com
THE STRIKING OSCAR Fredrik Church in Volvo’s home city of Gothenburg is a Neo-Gothic building, which means its architect (Helgo Zettervall) looked to the past for his design – but to the future for the engineering behind it. And the team that developed the new Volvo EX90 has taken a similar approach.
You see, at first glance this luxury SUV doesn’t look all that different from the hugely popular Volvo XC90 that it replaces. However, under the surface it fully embraces the latest technology by switching to electric power; no petrol, diesel or even hybrid variants will be offered.
More precisely, the only version of the EX90 that will be available when sales begin late in 2023 has two electric motors (one on the front axle and the other at the rear to give it four-wheel drive), with these producing a total of 510bhp.That matches the range-topping versions of the closely related Polestar 3 and the rival BMW iX.
Power for the EX90’s motors comes from the same 111kWh battery as in the Polestar and, not surprisingly, the two cars have similar official ranges: 373 miles and 379 miles respectively, so they both narrowly trump the iX’s figure of 369 miles.
The EX90’s maximum charging speed is still to be confirmed, but Volvo is promising that you’ll be able to take its battery from 10-80% in less than 30 minutes if you use an ultra-rapid public charger. If you charge at home using a 7kW wallbox, you can expect the battery to go from zero to full in just over 11 hours.
As a bonus, this is Volvo’s first electric model that’s capable of bi-directional charging, meaning you can use it to charge another electric vehicle that’s running low on juice – the modern equivalent of a jump start.
Perhaps more significantly in this era of sky-high energy bills, the technology could potentially allow you to power your home from your car during peak times and later recharge the EX90’s battery at night when electricity is at its cheapest.
Volvo says it’s even looking into the possibility of allowing customers to sell energy they don’t use back to the grid.
But what about when you need to charge up your EX90 because you’ve actually driven it somewhere? Well,Volvo says it’s working with various public charging networks on a new system (imaginatively named ‘Plug and Charge’) that will allow the car to start charging as soon as it’s plugged in. In theory, you wouldn’t even have to swipe your credit card; paym
