• Generous space in rows one and two
• Row three disappointingly tight
• Sliding middle seats give legroom where you need it

How much space is there?

In a word, lots. Like on Volvo’s XC90, this is a very large interior that’s well set up for family life. All rear seats fold easily – the middle ones by mechanical levers, the rear-most set electrically – and they drop flat into the floor, presumably a tricky engineering exercise given the skateboard-style battery underneath. 

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Thanks the efficiencies of EV packaging, there is loads of room in the middle row. You sit higher than the front seats so the visibility is excellent but even allowing for that raised perch, there is a vast amount of leg and headroom. Three adults will fit in relative comfort, with enough elbow room not to feel too enclosed.

Access to the rearmost seats is easy, with just a flick of a lever and the seat canters and then slides forward. With the middle row in its rearmost position, knee room in the back is tight so you need to slide the middle row forward. Even then, there’s precious little space for feet under the second row seats, with the far cheaper Peugeot E-5008 proving better here.

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A Kia EV9 feels the more useful seven-seat SUV if carrying people is the priority – and why we named it our best seven-seater in our 2025 awards. If maximum space is required from your seven-seat EV, try a Volkswagen ID.Buzz LWB.

Boot space and storage

The boot is large, with 310 litres of space even with all seven seats upright. That’s about the same as a Ford Fiesta’s boot, and means there’s still space for a couple of large suitcases. With the rear two rows down, that increases to 1,910 litres – enough for a substantial amount of IKEA flatpack. It lacks the ultimate capacity of a Land Rover Discovery or Kia EV9, which come in at 258 and 333 and 2,406 and 2,318 litres respectively.

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You also get a big storage space below the boot floor for keeping cables out of the way, along with additional 80 litres of storage under the bonnet. Again, that’s behind the Kia EV9’s 90 litres, but it’s more than enough for additional cables and your first aid kit etc.

Oddment storage in the cabin is much better than in the XC90, with useful trays where the bulky transmission tunnel would be below the touchscreen. Door pockets are a good size, and even third row occupants get cupholders and a bit of storage. Unlike a number of other large EVs, the EX90 gives you a decent luggage area under the bonnet, too.

Safety

• Not tested by Euro NCAP at the time of writing
• Volvo’s past efforts suggest a five-star rating
• Advanced semi-autonomous driving coming

All the safety kit on board is bang up to date. Volvo is still making gains with passive safety systems like the airbags and crash structures, constantly evolving the design as more is learnt about car crashes (it has access to data from 50,000 accidents to help on that front). It’s yet to be tested by Euro NCAP, but we’d be astonished if it didn’t earn five stars.

But active safety is also to the fore, with a new lidar sensor on the car’s roof (the taxi-esque lump that looks bizarre) that can detect objects up to 250m away to make sure the car’s systems react as they should do. For the time being, it’s only processing data but from later in 2025 it will be turned on to work with the car’s systems. Volvo prefers a combination of sensors and cameras, unlike Tesla which insists that the latter are up to the job. There’s also a two-sensor ‘driver understanding’ system.

It might sound a bit Big Brother but we found Volvo’s driver assistance system, Pilot Assist, to work impressively well. It’s far less irritating and mmore natural with fewer false positives than those on other cars we’ve tried – including Volvo’s own EX30 electric hatch.