Long-term test: Volvo EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance

Verdict

Every family member loves different aspects of the Volvo EX90 – the kids the versatile seats, my wife the comfort and refinement, and me the big boot, high performance and low running costs. But the alarm has gone berserk and the fiddly touchscreen frustrates, although new software might bring better voice commands.

• Mileage: 1,536 miles
• Efficiency: 2.8mi/kWh

After I wafted the EX90 onto the drive, my neighbour leaned over the fence and said: “I can’t believe how quiet that car is.” Uh-oh: famous last words as it turns out…

In many ways, he’s bang on: the seven-seat electric SUV is a lovely, relaxing way to travel. Gliding over decent Tarmac in our town’s 20mph zones, the Volvo is borderline silent. Tune in your bat ears and you can hear the powerful twin motors hum gently as they accelerate or top up the battery with regenerative braking, but that’s about it. There’s not a peep out of the suspension while clambering over speed bumps: seriously impressive, especially given the 2.7 tonnes of mass it has to manage.

I had a run to the McLaren Technology Centre the other week, the day the Prime Minister visited Woking. The indecent hour was offset by padded seats that are trademark Volvo; it’s like nestling back into a cashmere-wrapped marshmallow, with excellent side support. I wish there were grab handles overhead, mind you: it’s a sign of my age, but I like pulling myself up to stretch out on long journeys. And even with the quiet cabin, I’d like the indicators to be a touch louder and stickier: they don’t always click on properly.  

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My preferred ride/handling set-up is to have the adaptive suspension in Standard and the steering in Firm, plus Low braking assistance to lightly amp up deceleration when I’m orchestrating progress with the one-pedal-mode throttle. At motorway speeds the EX90’s body sometimes bobs around and the front wheels can drop over sharp crests, but the Volvo rides more fluently than my last car, a BMW X3 30e. And on the early-morning, stop/start M25, the Volvo returned 3.3 miles per kWh, besting its official consumption. 

Over 1,400 miles I’m averaging 2.8 mi/kWh, which is okay for such a big SUV. And by religiously charging during the five-hour nightly window when my Octopus Go rate is peanuts, the Volvo has cost about 6p per mile to run – and that includes one expensive public charge. Quite the advert for EVs when the UK diesel price has hit an all-time high.  

We recently filled all seven seats for the first time, too, with my stepmum and brother joining us for a birthday dinner. The back benches are fine for my 11 and 13-year-olds; my brother – an XC90 owner – reckons the EX’s boot with all seats up is marginally more practical. The journey back qualified us for an episode of Kids Say the Funniest Things, when our eight-year-old started recounting terms for intimate body parts the school had just taught, including her Volvo.

But this family motoring bliss has been disturbed by the intruder alarm going feral. The occasional trigger has now morphed into a short-lived, phantom wail every few days. One night it started blaring at 2am, so I drove the Volvo to a quiet local trading estate to keep the peace. My other workaround is to stick it in our garage, but having a lie down in a darkened room only pacified it for 48 hours. 

A software reboot hasn’t worked, so maybe it’s a faulty sensor or siren battery? We’ll find out soon: Volvo is taking the car away to diagnose – while I’m doing extra cat-sitting and dog-walking to make it up to the neighbours.

Volvo EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance: first fleetwatch report

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The EX90 is a 2.7-tonne giant, but its huge battery and rapid charging make light work of its colossal size

The Volvo EX90 is big. Wait, don’t go, the insight gets deeper: big is a double-edged sword. I’ve already raved about the spacious cabin, but the boot swallows a week’s groceries for five with all seven seats upright, or I can drop the back bench for 690 litres and there’s room for two massive suitcases and three carry-ons. 

Big also applies to the 102kWh battery. While the car’s official range is 376 miles, 300 miles is par for a full charge. We’ve racked up more than 1,000 miles of mixed driving, with average efficiency of 2.82mi/kWh. Unimpressive? In mitigation, the voluminous Volvo weighs more than 2.7 tonnes, and bests Kia’s similarly sized EV9.      

It charges quickly too. On a DC charger at Newport Pagnell services, the EX90 quaffed 34kWh in just eight minutes at an average rate of 250kW. And that means 300 miles of range is more than enough. 

Volvo EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance: first report

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Range-topping version of flagship SUV joins our fleet and is fast becoming a family favourite

• Mileage: 677 miles
• Efficiency: 2.82mi/kWh

The arrival of Volvo’s EX90 has triggered almost as much McNamara family excitement as another Scandinavian resident, clad in red, who pilots a chariot infinitely faster than even this 680bhp electric car.

Why? Because this flagship SUV has seven seats and is dripping with clever, family-friendly touches. Case in point: to adjust the rearmost seats, you press buttons in either the boot or the rear door housing. Whether you need to load a child from the front, or cargo from the rear, you can get the perfect layout with a fingertip. Or there’s YouTube on the massive portrait touchscreen – although a frosty reception to the news my younger passengers can’t watch it on the move.  

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My three daughters revel in the fact they’re not bunched up in a single row, especially because seven-year-old Maisie still uses a child seat. She loves the exclusivity of her back perch, complete with cup-holder, air vent and oddments tray, while the eldest two, Gabriella and Florence, appreciate an arm rest with Starbucks holders, plus individual climate and seat heater controls. Until this car arrived, they thought PJs were something to be worn at night; now they’re getting a taste for how car industry execs get around in their Private Jets. 

Our car is in Ultra spec, offering a black, tan or this light-coloured ‘Dawn’ interior, trimmed in a mix of recycled, synthetic and pine resin bio materials that somehow ends up looking and feeling like leather. Appropriately, it will suffer our biological warfare over the next six months; I’ll be intrigued to see how it copes.

If the interior is worryingly light, the £895 Mulberry Red paint is excessively dark – until it catches the sun. Then, blocky brown shifts to sparkling dark red, and it looks magnificent. In low light, the EX90’s subtle lines, absence of chrome, and hidden door handles accentuate the statuesque proportions to make for a brooding behemoth, towering on 22-inch alloys with those ace two-tone triangles. 

The EX90 range kicks off at £73,160 for the 333bhp single-motor, rear-drive variant with 350 miles of range and Core trim. That looks instantly less expensive next to Volvo’s £605 costlier plug-in hybrid XC90, the EX90’s sister car whose origin was well over a decade ago. 

Plus trim (£80,160) adds a head-up display, Bose sound system and cabin air purifier, but our £93,860 Ultra edition also lumps in an electrochromatic panoramic roof and posh seats with massage and ventilation. Most transformative is the active chassis, with electronically controlled suspension that adjusts 500 times per second to boost traction or comfort. It’s early days, but the Volvo has an obvious spread of ability, from pillowy soft on motorways and hunkered down on a cross-country dash to a touch leaden in town. 

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We’ve stepped over the 456bhp Twin Motor variant in favour of Twin Motor Performance. This £4,300 upgrade – only available on Ultra spec – throws another 224 horses into the mix and bludgeons 1.3 seconds off the 0-62mph sprint, cutting it to a mere 4.2 seconds. 

At any speed, acceleration is – frankly – silly. From standstill, the colossal 870Nm of torque threatens to overpower the steering; the girls love the way it pushes them back in their seats. All this supposedly shaves seven miles off the Twin Motor’s 383-mile range, but I’ve yet to see more than 310 projected miles. My first run, to the Festival of Speed, returned 3.17mi/kWh – not bad for a 2.7-tonne SUV.

But using the touchscreen is fiddlier than a folk music festival: function ‘buttons’ about the size of a 5p coin are grouped at the screen’s base, with indistinct visual variation of whether one-pedal driving is in LO or HI, for example. And don’t get me started on changing the air-con temperature: it’s buried in a sub-menu beneath less frequently used functions. For a brand built on safety, it’s scandalous how often Volvo expects me to drive along looking at knee height. 

Other than this major bugbear, it feels like Christmas has come early in our household. The next six months will tell us for sure.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.

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