Long-term test: Volvo EX90 Ultra Twin Motor Performance

It’s early days with Volvo’s flagship electricSUV, but the luxury of its space and the delightful versatility are wiing hearts and minds. Even with the rear seats upright, there’s space for a family of five’s gear for a weekend away. It’s nice to know there’s huge performance on tap, but more importantly, the efficiency is okay. So far, so good.

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.  

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. 

Used - available now

2025 Volvo

Ex90

1,000 milesAutomaticElectric

2025 Volvo

Ex90

8,975 milesAutomaticElectric

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. 

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-toe 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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Phil is Auto Express’ editor-at-large: he keeps close to car companies, finding out about new cars and researching the stories that matter to readers. He’s reported on cars for more than 25 years as editor of Car, Autocar’s news editor and he’s written for Car Design News and T3. 

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