Overview

For more than 20 years, if you’ve wanted the best seven-seat SUV the Volvo XC90 has been tough to beat, with its mix of safety, comfort and space going down a treat with buyers. Volvo is now looking to do the same in the electric SUV class with its new EX90. 

It’s the electric equivalent to the XC90, but is completely different underneath and has been designed from the outset to be an EV. It shares plenty in common with the Polestar 3, but unlike that car, the EX90 comes with seven seats. It faces a fairly small pool of electric SUV rivals with three rows of seats, with its main rivals being the far more expensive Mercedes EQS SUV and far cheaper (and excellent) Kia EV9. 

The EX90 is a big car at more than 5m in length – 10cm more than an XC90 –  but that space is put to good use with a large and clever interior that offers masses of space for passengers and luggage. 

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It was more than two years between Volvo first revealing its EX90 and it arriving on sale, with the firm facing several software hurdles to overcome in its development. Part of this delay was down to its advanced driver assistance technologies that should make it one of the safest cars on the road. The small box at the front of the roof is what houses the lidar sensor, which are used for self-driving cars – something the EX90 should be capable of later on in its lifespan.

But the elephant in the room is the EX90’s price. At launch, you can only buy it with powerful twin electric motor powertrains and in a top-spec trim level, with a starting price of £96,000 and the range-topping model costs more than £100,000. It makes it by far the most expensive Volvo sold and enters the brand into unchartered territory. 

Scroll down to read the Parkers review on the new Volvo EX90 and whether it justifies that price. We’ll explore all aspects of the car, including its practicality, interior quality, technology, driving experience and running costs before offering our final verdict. If you’d like to learn more about how we reached our verdict on the EX90, check out our how we test cars explainer page.

What’s it like inside?

Largely brilliant. Build quality is excellent and the design is, as ever in recent Volvos, calming and with a tastefully expensive flourish. It is a bit spec dependant, though.Our test car came with black ‘Nordico’ artificial leather, which didn’t do the cabin any favours and made it quite dark.

You can also have it in a white finish, but our preference would be the woollen upholstery that gives the EX90 a very stylish and upmarket feel. It might not be the most practical for those with young children, however. 

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The EX90’s cabin is dominated by a huge touchscreen that runs on new software. It’s especially responsive and it’s useful to have various in-built Google features such as navigation and its voice assistant, as is the case across Volvo’s range of cars. But there are too many features integrated into it for our liking, with almost no physical buttons. It can be distracting to use on the move and seems at odds with Volvo’s focus on safety.

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. 

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. 

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Access to the rear 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. But the car will swallow a family of six with ease. 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.

The boot is also huge, 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. You also get a big storage space below the boot floor for keeping cables out of the way, along with additional storage under the bonnet. 

Comfort

Comfort has always been an area Volvo has excelled and the EX90 doesn’t disappoint. The feeling of space and plenty of glass for those in the first and second rows means passengers can travel with ease. 

Heated seats are provided in the first two rows and even those in the rearmost seats get their own climate control. Massaging front seats are standard on the EX90 at launch, while the front seats offer a great amount of support with lots of lumbar adjustment and manual cushion extensions for the front seats to offer more leg support for taller drivers. 

Safety

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). 

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.

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It might sound a bit Big Brother but we found the safety assists to work impressively well, and far less irritating than those on other cars we’ve tried – including Volvo’s own EX30 electric crossover. 

Powertrains 

Initially, Volvo is only selling the EX90 with more powerful twin-motor powertrains – unlike the related Polestar 3, which is available with a cheaper single-motor configuration. 

Two versions of the EX90 are available at launch, called Twin Motor and Twin Motor Performance, though each uses the same size battery, which we’ll explore in the next section. The Twin Motor puts out 408hp and 770Nm of torque (pulling power) with the Performance model taking the totals up to 517hp and 910Nm of torque – the most of any Volvo car. 

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The more powerful model is able to sprint from 0-62mph in just 4.9 seconds, with the standard car taking a second more. Both are limited to a top speed of 112mph, as is the case for every new Volvo. We also can’t not mention the EX90’s weight, which is significant at almost 2.8 tonnes. 

Range and charging 

All EX90s come with a huge 107kWh (usable capacity) battery, one of the largest EV sold in Europe. It gives the EX90 a claimed electric driving range of up to 374 miles, which is the same across both versions. 

But the real-world electric driving range is disappointing. Our UK test route was a fairly gentle route around Surrey with a mix of urban and dual carriageway, and though carried out in winter, it was not in especially cold ambient temperatures. We averaged 2.7 miles per kWh (kilowatt hour). This gives an electric range of around 290 miles – a respectable figure, but someway off the predicted claims, and it’s a bit disappointing for something with such a big battery. 

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The charging speeds are impressive, though, as the EX90 can be topped up at up to 250kW, allowing a 10 to 80% rapid charge to be completed in just 30 minutes. If you plug it in with a slower 7kW public charger (most wallboxes at home have this voltage), it will take 16 hours. 

What’s it like to drive

Largely as you’d expect: safely and conservatively. There are few hidden depths to the EX90 as it goes through a corner – it turns in well, with minimal feel, rolls into the apex and flows out again. Only a quick left/right flick unsettles it and even then it’s hardly earth-shattering. 

But it’s not a car you’ll be hurrying along as the EX90 performs much better at a gentle cruise. Refinement, especially at speed, is highly impressive with minimal road and wind noise entering the cabin. It’s generally comfortable but can be unsettled on uneven urban roads. Even with the standard twin-chamber suspension, it can’t fully control the EX90 and its 2.8 tonnes and 22-inch alloy wheels. 

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Even the speed isn’t as surprising as you’d think the figures would indicate – the 0-62mph time in the Twin Motor Performance is faster than a Honda Civic Type R. It’s quick but not outrageously so, putting on enough speed to be comfortable but without ever feeling like things could get out of control. It’s well-judged for a big family SUV like this, and the automatic regenerative braking enables genuine one-pedal driving. 

What models and trims are available?

As mentioned already, the EX90 is only available at launch in more powerful twin-motor guises and in a range-topping Ultra trim level. Cheaper versions are expected to follow in time, but there is no word on when yet. 

Prices start from £96,255 for the Twin Motor model and £100,555 for the Twin Motor Performance, which are both a huge amount of money. That said, there are almost no optional extras available on top of those prices, and the paint colours and different interiors are all included for free. 

Standard equipment is highly impressive, too, with features such as a 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkins sound system included, along with massaging front seats, a 360-degree camera system and huge 14.5-inch touchscreen to name just a few features.