First ride in 2025 Volvo EX90 as testing wraps up

The Volvo EX90 will go into production in the coming months, more than 18 months after it was first revealed, with the Swedish brand promising its new electric flagship SUV will set new standards for safety. The large SUV, which will sit alongside the combustion-engined XC90, was first shown back in November 2022. Manufacturing will start shortly at Volvo’s factory in Charleston, South Carolina. Priced from £96,255, it’s available to pre-order now in, with first UK deliveries due before the end of the year. Although she admitted that the EX90 had been delayed by a number of software issues, product manager Hande Ergiturk said the car’s reveal “was deliberately early, because it wasn’t just a car reveal, it was a reveal of our new technology”. Related articles The EX90 is the first car to sit on Volvo’s advanced new SPA2 electric car platform, which it shares with the new Polestar 3 SUV, and is Volvo’s first “software-defined” vehicle, with an advanced operating system that was developed entirely in-house and uses two high-speed computer chips. Refining that complex system was a major challenge, explained Ergiturk: “It has been a big technology leap, and it wasn’t an easy task. But safety is super-important for us; it was important to make sure that all the systems were refined and top-notch before they were offered to customers.” One of the two chips is dedicated to running the advanced safety systems, which use a lidar scanner, five radars, eight sensors and 12 ultrasonic sensors. All that allows the car to scan the road ahead for what’s claimed to be more effective use of the driver assistance systems. Ergiturk called the EX90 “the safest car Volvo has ever made, protecting people both outside and inside the car”, claiming: “It’s a big step towards zero collisions.” The active safety systems aren’t just used when the car is moving. Interior sensors are used both for the compulsory driver monitoring system and to detect occupants, whether children or animals, to ensure that nobody can get locked inside the car.