Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to get behind the wheel of Volvo’s all-new EX90 7-seater SUV with a quick drive around Adelaide and the beautiful Barossa Valley. Now we have been able to spend a bit more time with it in Melbourne to see what Volvo’s newest EV could be like to live with.
Having driven the top-spec Ultra Twin Motor Performance variant for just over a week, I can say that it’s one fast luxury 7-seater from the Scandinavian brand that sets the stage for Volvo’s future with EVs.
The price, this variant comes in at $134,990 and comes with a powertrain which Volvo has previously said is the most powerful SUV the company has ever built. Well, driving it around Melbourne and regional Victoria, I can certainly say that they’re not wrong.
It’s bumped up power figure from the Plus variant, which comes in at 300 kW to 380 kW in the Ultra variant, helping sprint time from 0-100 km/h to just 4.9 seconds. Part of that is also helped by the massive 910 Nm of torque its dual-motor powertrain packs.
For a 7-seater family SUV that is over 5 metres in length and weighs 2.8 tonnes on 22-inch wheels, that’s impressive acceleration.
On Victorian roads, we felt the power on suburban streets and on the freeways, making overtaking so easy. The twin-motor setup delivers the power fairly quickly with minimal lag on the highways while on the smaller city streets, it’s pretty zippy which is surprising given its size.
The EX90 is one of the few cars that sits on Volvo’s new SPA2 platform, which gives it more of a ground-up EV feel, making handling so much more composed even when driving through the hills of Mornington Pensinsula where I usually test handling dynamics of most cars.
Given the length of the car, a bit of body roll was what I was expecting around curvy bends around Red Hill, but it was very well planted through the turns and accelerated out so easily.
The steering also gave good feedback, making driving around those roads so much fun as the car holds its line closer to a smaller SUV or even some electric sedans I’ve tested in the past.
One of the most important features in any EV is its ability to do one-pedal-driving. Volvo has nailed it on this car and in the city, it makes driving so easy.
You can have the regenerative braking on or off. Most of my driving on the week-long test was with it on, and it performed well, especially when slowing down or coming to a stop.
On the highways, the autonomous driving system was better than many of the systems I’ve tested recently. Engaging autonomous driving is as simple as tapping the gear selector stalk.
It is smooth around bends and maintains speed when safe to do so, as well as performing lane changes once the indicator is used to tell the car which lanes to change into.
Volvo’s done a great job in making the EX90 more than just a larger 7-seater for families, ticking many of the boxes enthusiasts would be looking for too.
Feeding the powertrain is a large 111 kWh Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) battery pack, which, in this configuration, provides up to 570 km of WLTP range according to official figures.
During testing, we got close to that when driving on a mixture of city and highway drives. On shorter drives, consumption was around 24 kWh/100 km, but dropped to 19 kWh/100 km on longer reasonable runs.
On a side note, I quite like the chargeport on the left-hand side of the car, making it easier to charge at open Tesla superchargers as well.
The EX90’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) worked effortlessly with minimal bings and dongs, making it one of the least intrusive systems I’ve tested in recent times.
This genuinely made the whole driving experience a lot more pleasant and shows that Volvo has been listening to its customers in delivering an experience many expect from the brand.
From the outside, the Volvo EX90 looks like many of the modern Volvos with a design language featuring its Thor-hammer-like front lights. At the rear, it’s simple, angular/curved and the tail lights.
It’s still very Volvo and is appreciated by many drivers who want the great Scandinavian design.
On top of that, the EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance is also the brand’s most powerful SUV, giving drivers clean design and high-end power in a 7-seater package.
That’s something few other large luxury SUV rivals, such as the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV and the BMW iX, will match at this price point. It also sets the stage for the EVs the company plans to bring in the coming years.
For now, the EX90 Ultra Twin Power Performance handles better than any large 7-seater electric SUV I’ve ever driven on Victorian roads.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.