The all-new ES90 is the first electric Volvo that’s not an SUV – and the slippery hatchback has a range well in excess of 400 miles.
The Swedish brand is positioning the five-metre-long ES90 as its technological flagship, thanks to a series of advanced features and mighty computing power that will allow it to be extensively updated and refreshed over the air with new, additional features during its lifetime.
While it's ostensibly a saloon in profile, Volvo says design trickery allows it to combine the raised driving position and ground clearance of an SUV (the latter being 4cm lower than the EX90) with a fastback body; it's actually a five-door, with a rear hatchback.
The styling follows that of the EX90 - including the large, visible lidar sensor in the roof - and it is the most aerodynamic Volvo in history. Its drag coefficient is 0.25.
The ES90 is the second Volvo to be launched on the SPA2 electric architecture after the related EX90 SUV. While some global left-hand-drive markets will get the model from later this summer, UK buyers will have to wait approximately a year for deliveries of right-hand-drive ES90s, when it will be priced from around £70,000 for an entry-level Plus trim model and rise to just below £90,000 for a top-spec Ultra.
Three powertrain options are offered alongside two battery sizes, which have improved energy management software and hardware to enable longer ranges.
There is a standard 328bhp, 354lb ft rear-wheel-drive Single Motor model; a 443bhp, 494lb ft all-wheel-drive Twin Motor; and a 671bhp, 642lb ft Twin Motor Performance version. The 0-62mph times of this trio are 6.9sec, 5.6sec and 4.0sec respectively and the top speed of all three models is capped at 112mph.
The battery options are 88kWh (usable) and a 102kWh unit for a headline range of 434 miles. The predicted range of the smaller-battery model is 404 miles. The single-motor version comes with the smaller battery and the twin-motor versions with the larger one.
Volvo has also equipped the ES90 with 350kW rapid charging that enables 186 miles of range to be added in 10 minutes with the larger battery. To get from 10% battery capacity to 80% takes 20 minutes in this model. In order to charge at faster speeds for longer than the 400V EX90 (which has a maximum charging output of 250kW), the ES90 gets an 800V electric architecture.
The ES90 follows the EX90 in being fitted with Volvo's Superset tech stack, which has been made more powerful still in its second application and given an additional Nvidia Orin processor. Rather than having a series of individual ECUs to operate different components and functions, the ES90 uses twin central Nvidia Orin processors that can handle more than 500 trillion operations per second.
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Hallelujah! An new sedan from Volvo! And it's interesting at least.
Volvo still don't offer trailer assist (to reverse steer a trailer) and remote parking to let you easily and remotely drive your large car out of a UK parking bay when someone has parked too close, THEN get in the car. I use these all the time on my Touareg. Annoying when they have all the hardware already in the car to offer this but don't do the software. I'd like the new XC90 but these two features are stopping me getting it (cue the comments about learn to drive etc.....)
I like the look of this, the Lidar taxi sign is a bit naff but otherwise its good. The interior is the usual touch screen orientated design that everyone is using now so not as impressive. Its interesting that Mr Offer considers "light" to be part of the premium experience, something his Polestar colleagues obviously don't agree on.