2025 Volvo EX90 Performance First Test: A Few Buttons Short of Perfection

Motor Trend

a day ago

Pros Drives exactly how a Volvo should
Seats so comfortable, you'll want them in your house
Practical three-row seating with ample cargo space Cons Rivals offer more range and faster charging
Safety settings revert to DEFCON 5 before every drive
Minimalist user experience isn't for everyone
The first Volvo engineered from the ground up to be an EV is, in nearly every way, exactly what Gothenburg's crown jewel should be. The 2025 Volvo EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance is as practical as it is luxurious, quiet and comfortable with a timeless design and effortless performance.
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There's just one hurdle that might trip up buyers willing to fork over $90,640 for the 510-hp three-row SUV. Volvo's embrace of the latest tech trends has completely changed how you interact with the car. Are Volvo buyers really clamoring for a button-free cockpit? Did they ask for an alternative to the tried-and-true key fob? And how much Tesla is too much Tesla for a Volvo owner?
The Flagship Volvo Driving Experience
The tech will likely push some shoppers outside their comfort zones, but that's the only way an EX90 can make anyone uncomfortable. The Ultra trim's air springs and adaptive dampers relax the optional $800 22-inch wheels with rubber-band tires, turning hard impacts into soft, distant thumps. The cabin is a blissful sanctuary free from wind noise, road noise, and the constant thrum of an internal combustion engine. The front seats cradle you like a bean-bag chair and give a Swedish massage so good we dropped a $20 tip in the cupholder.
Toggling the steering and suspension between soft and firm effects changes big enough to be felt and subtle enough that every combination is a natural fit for a Volvo with 'Performance' in its name. This car isn't fierce, it's fluid. Its 671lb-ft of torque pour out of the motors like fondue—smooth, creamy, indulgent goodness.
Hitting 60 mph in 4.2 seconds and clearing the quarter mile in 13.0 seconds might not be all that quick by time-warping EV standards, but it's a quiet riot in a Volvo. Stopping a 6,084-pound SUV on all-season tires from 60 mph in just 110 feet is a revolt against the laws of physics.
With one-pedal driving switched on, the right pedal transitions from acceleration to coasting to deceleration with uncommon grace. The regenerative braking isn't quite as aggressive as what you'll get in a Rivian or a Tesla, and the EX90 is better for it. No matter how quickly you lift off the accelerator, it's impossible to bobble your passengers' heads.
All this makes the EX90 Performance unique in how it blends comfort and athleticism, which we want to stress is different than a luxury SUV that can switch between comfort and sport—plenty of German SUVs already have the Jekyll and Hyde thing covered. The EX90 never feels flustered by a fast curve or unsettled by a rough road. It is always smooth and quick at the same time.
In the age of electronic controls and software-defined features, it's rare for a new car to be so laser focused on a singular, consistent driving character. The dynamics engineers appear to have a narrow idea of what a Volvo should be—the right idea.
We have just one complaint about how it drives: There are brief moments where the EX90 is the mellowest 510-hp car we've ever driven. Stomp the right pedal from a roll at suburban or interstate speeds, and the EX90 takes its sweet time before rocketing toward the horizon. You can literally count out loud—one, two, three—before the full force hits you. If you want the immediacy EVs are known for, you have to activate Performance AWD, which keeps the front permanent-magnet motor engaged at all times at the expense of efficiency and range.
Volvo EX90 Real-World Range and Fast-Charging
Officially, the EX90 Performance with 22-inch rollers is rated for 300 miles, down from 310 miles with the Ultra's standard 21-inch wheels. Run through the MotorTrend Road-Trip Range test (a steady 70 mph from 100 to 5 percent charge), the EX90 scored a mediocre 247 miles. A 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS580 4Matic SUV and 2022 BMW iX xDrive50 hit 315 and 312 miles, respectively, in our testing (both models have since seen some slight revisions).
The Volvo at least doesn't try to fool you into believing 300 miles is possible. While most automakers reset the range estimate to show the EPA figure (or close to it) every time you charge to 100 percent, the EX90 consistently indicated 250 miles of range with a full battery—a number that's realistically achievable if you drive the SUV to empty.
The EX90's DC fast-charging performance also left us underwhelmed. While Volvo claims a peak of 250 kW, we saw power top out at 193 kW in our charging test that added 94 miles of range in 15 minutes. The Mercedes gained 126 miles and the BMW 122 in the same time.
A Different Kind of Luxury
In the Scandinavian tradition, the EX90 spoils occupants without being flashy. You don't buy it to inform your neighbors and coworkers that you've arrived. You buy it to tickle your eardrums with the $3,200 25-speaker Dolby Atmos–enabled Bowers & Wilkens audio system or to treat your lower back to those therapeutic seats. The only hint of ritzy opulence comes from the warm, white glow that shines through the sustainably harvested wood trim at night, a tasteful counterpoint to the ribbons of carnival lights used by the luxury-car establishment.
If it helps to justify the near-six-figure price tag, you can rationalize the EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance as a pragmatic family vehicle, too. The three-row SUV comes in six- and seven-seat configurations with a booster seat integrated into the center position of the second-row bench. Squeezing into the third row will be a workout for passengers of all sizes, but the rear seats are a pleasant place even for average-size adults thanks to the abundant natural light pouring through the glass roof and a dedicated cupholder, USB-C port, and chest-level HVAC vent for each passenger.
There's surprisingly generous cargo space behind the third row, especially if you make use of the spacious underfloor well that can swallow a couple of medium-sized duffel bags. Unfortunately, the decent-sized frunk has been rendered nearly useless by two curious decisions.
Volvo segmented the tray into three sections to skirt the regulations that would have otherwise required an internal emergency release, and you can only open the hood by yanking a lever by the driver's left shin, a strange holdover from the internal combustion era.
How Much Tech Is Too Much Tech?
All that leaves us with one thing left to discuss: the software. To understand why the EX90 is the way it is, you first need a basic understanding of the central computing platform at the core of Volvo's Scalable Product Architecture 2 (SPA2).
Rather than the old piecemeal approach where every widget in the car had its own computer, the bulk of the EX90's code runs on just two Nvidia chips and a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The same idea has allowed Tesla and Rivian to develop innovative new features, launch powerful and genuinely useful phone apps, and deliver over-the-air updates for any system in the vehicle. Volvo is chasing after those frontrunners, and the EX90 puts the company way out ahead of most legacy automakers in this regard.
For buyers and shoppers, this change shows up as a pervasive Teslafication of how you interact with the vehicle. All the EX90's secondary controls save for the volume knob and audio power button have been digitized in the vertical 14.5-inch touchscreen. To activate adaptive cruise control or the lane-centering Pilot Assist system, you'll first have to retrain your neurons that grabbing the gear selector at 70 mph is a totally normal thing to do.
The EX90 unlocks and flips out its door handles as you approach with the buttonless fob (or your phone loaded with a digital key) in your pocket, and the ignition powers up only when you shift into drive (you can actually get the car moving a fraction of a second before the power steering assist kicks in).
Whether these are good or bad developments depends on your relationship with technology and your outlook on change—although surely we can all agree that giving the driver just two switches and a fussy capacitive button to control four windows is patently dumb.
Not up for debate is the fact that the new infotainment system vaults Volvo from the digital stone age into the modern era. Volvo's current gas models (and the EVs based on them) are dated by tiny screens with grainy resolution and a clumsy interface at least five years past its expiration. The EX90's infotainment, built on Android Automotive OS, is exactly the reboot Volvo needs.
The tiled home screen is dominated by Google Maps plus widgets for audio and a paired phone and two rows of controls along the bottom of the screen. The layout and logic feel like a bridge between the old way of doing things and Tesla's approach, which comes with a steepish learning curve.
Download a few apps like Spotify, Waze, and PlugShare, and the EX90's native infotainment system almost makes the included wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto redundant, if only an automaker could find a solution for text messaging.
The Work That's Left Unfinished
It's one thing for a startup to reinvent how cars are wired from a clean sheet of paper and another thing entirely for a 98-year-old company to reimagine the way things have been done for decades. Reorganizing teams, bringing in fresh talent, creating new policies and processes, and throwing out all that time-tested software isn't easy, and in many legacy automakers it might cause the whole house of cards to collapse.
The good news is Volvo appears to have exterminated most of the bugs from the system. Aside from one drive where the center screen failed to boot, our two weeks with the EX90 were happily error-free.
You get a sense, though, that Volvo left some work unfinished to get the EX90 out the door even after it delayed the launch more than six months. Or maybe Volvo's evolving minimalist sensibilities have convinced the engineers that buyers want less control.
The following distance of the adaptive cruise control has one setting that leaves a gap large enough to invite semis into your lane. Setting up a driver profile and tying it to your key ensures the seats are exactly where you want them before you sit down, but the safety systems revert to their high-anxiety default before every drive. I lost count of how many times the driver distraction alert beeped at me as I drove through my neighborhood while pecking at the screen to reset everything to my liking.
The unseemly wart on the EX90's forehead also does nothing for the driver. The lidar sensor inside hoovers up data and beams it back to the mothership for now. Volvo says a software update coming later this year will activate the sensor so that the driver assistance systems can see further ahead, but even then, Pilot Assist won't allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel. GM's Super Cruise (a MotorTrend Best Tech winner) does more without sullying the design team's work. That hits especially hard, since Volvo's mastery of proportion, surfacing, and detail is on full display with the EX90.
Don't Let the Tech Push Your Buttons
Evaluate it as a car rather than a computer, and the 2025 Volvo EX90 Twin Motor Performance is brilliant. It delivers the cosseting luxury, rejuvenating comfort, and sure-footed dynamics we want in a flagship driving experience. It's also refreshing that, after more than a decade of lagging the rest of the industry, Volvo finally has in-car tech worthy of a luxury brand.
At the same time, we can empathize with the buyers who don't want to relearn the basics of operating a car. Whether Volvo has pushed the techy minimalism too far is a question for each individual buyer to answer. But it'd be a shame to ignore a car this good—and seats this spectacular—over a few buttons you'd soon learn to live without.