There’s a big trend towards electric SUVs right now, and it’s probably not what you think. It’s not about longer range. It’s not about more advanced battery design, super-fast charging, or even NACS connectors. No, the real trend towards electric SUVs is delay. The Audi Q6 E-Tron took a long time to start production, as did its sibling, the Audi Q6 E-Tron, which was also delayed by months.

Volvo’s EX90 has suffered the same fate. It’s due to launch in 2023, and its cousin, the Polestar 3, is only now finally stumbling out of Volvo’s production facility near Charleston, South Carolina. Finally, Volvo let me get behind the wheel of a pre-production model on a test drive to see if it was worth the wait.

Was that it? Yes and no, but I’m happy to say it’s mostly yes.

Let’s start with what it is. As the name suggests, the EX90 is something of a battery-powered counterpart to the brand’s XC90 SUV, the largest in their lineup. Like the XC90, the EX90 is an SUV with three rows of seats and seating for six or seven depending on configuration, a tall, upright stance, and of course, more safety features than you can shake a stick at.

But Volvo hasn’t just gutted an XC90 and put a big battery pack where the engine, exhaust and fuel tank used to be. This is a dedicated EV platform, a completely new one, designed from the start as an electric vehicle. It houses a 111-kilowatt-hour battery pack (107 kWh usable) and has two electric motors, one at the rear and one at the front, providing all-wheel drive.

Whether you opt for the base version, the $79,995 Plus trim, or the more luxurious $84,345 Ultra trim, you get the same dual-motor configuration producing 402 hp and 650 Nm of torque. If that’s not enough for you, you can spend $5,000 more on the Twin Motor Performance option, which boosts output to 510 hp and 850 Nm of torque. Both versions have an EPA-tested range of up to 310 miles, depending on which options you choose.

Interestingly, though, the two models have exactly the same engines and other related hardware. So what do you get for the extra $5,000? A different set of software and a small white plaque on the back that says “TWIN PERFORMANCE.” Welcome to the future.

It’s not just the powertrain that sets the EX90 apart from the internal combustion XC90, however. The EX90 is actually significantly smaller. At 19.5 feet long, it’s still big, but it’s more than three inches shorter and an inch lower than the XC90, and it’s almost two inches narrower.

The result is a machine that feels a little cramped compared to Volvo’s current large SUV.

Inner

At 6’11” I could barely squeeze into the third row. There was no room for my feet and knees. The second row was much more comfortable and offered plenty of headroom, but I still wouldn’t call it spacious, as it wasn’t nearly as generous as the second row legroom of a BMW iX or even a Hyundai Ioniq 5.

Fortunately, I spent most of my time in the front seats, which are excellent. Volvo offers two interior fabrics: Dawn Quilted Nordico, which feels like leather, or Tailored Wool Blend, which feels like high-quality woven upholstery. The latter is by far my favorite. These seats offer generous adjustment and a surprisingly comprehensive massage. Ventilation is about the only thing missing, and that’s a bit of a shame.

The rest of the interior is fairly simple and clean. The white trim over the charcoal fabric of the car I drove looks fantastic, as does the raised grain of the wooden dashboard insert, marred only slightly by the unfortunate chrome strips that run around it.

The highlight of the dashboard, however, is the 14.5-inch portrait touchscreen that sits upright in the center. This gives you access to the Android Automotive system, which controls the entire user interface, including the 9.0-inch instrument cluster behind the steering wheel and the projected head-up display.

Volvo’s interface here looks similar to what they originally offered, but is much more comprehensive and responsive than before. Running Google Maps natively is a great experience, as is the ability to do things like adjust car settings by voice with Google Assistant. The inevitable Gemini integration should only make it more powerful.

Android Automotive also provides access to numerous media apps, including Tidal, which offers Dolby Atmos streaming. For the first time, Volvo has a sound system that can take advantage of these benefits. A new Bowers & Wilkins system with a whopping 25 speakers fills the cabin with rich, clear sound. It’s available as part of the Ultra trim, which almost makes the upgrade cost over the base EX90 model worth it alone.

Travel time

The EX90 I test drove was fitted with the company’s largest wheels, 22 inches, and these were wrapped in sticky European-spec summer tires rather than the more moderate all-season tires fitted to American EX90s. Despite these two factors, the EX90 offers excellent handling characteristics.

It was smooth, quiet and comfortable over every highway split and the few broken bits of asphalt I could find. Only a hint of wind noise at highway speeds betrayed the fact that I was moving through space and time, not just the latter. All of this adds up to an even better soundscape for each of those 25 speakers.

The suspension is designed to be compliant, and the EX90 does tend to float a little after larger bumps or the like. That said, it was still reasonably responsive on tighter, twistier canyon roads. I wouldn’t say it was sharp or necessarily sporty, but it was really fun.

It turns well and has minimal lean for such a tall thing, thanks in part to the large battery pack being placed low to the floor. And yes, it has plenty of acceleration. Maybe even too much. The accelerator is a little sharp, which may make rear seat passengers with sensitive stomachs turn green. Perhaps another reason to forgo the white interior, lovely as it is.

The one-pedal drive mode is also quite sharp, bringing the EX90 to a stop in an instant. If you don’t like that, you can turn it off. When it’s off, the EX90 coasts along just fine. There’s also a third option: automatic. Here, the car coasts most of the time, but if there’s a car in front of you, regeneration is used more aggressively to maintain the distance.

This is just one aspect of the car’s advanced driver systems, where performance has been rather unreliable.

Large sensors

The most interesting design feature of the EX90, an SUV that looks very elegant and sophisticated but is rather understated, is the sensor unit above the windshield. Inside is a Luminar lidar unit that scans the road ahead of the car and creates a 3D point map of all obstacles. Or at least it will.

For now, this little piece of roof decoration is nothing more than that. But Volvo has announced that they will turn this sensor on next year and start collecting data via a software update. At some point in the future, it will be better integrated into the car’s adaptive safety system and will basically serve as another reference point to complement the other sensors.

What’s inside now feels more or less like Volvo’s current machines. The Pilot Assist system offers comprehensive active lane keeping assistance, meaning it keeps the car in the center of the lane. Volvo has also added an automatic lane change function, but you still have to trigger this manually by pushing the indicator stalk all the way down. This is all good enough, but a significant step behind the hands-free systems offered by Ford, General Motors and BMW. I also had some issues during my drive, as the lane centering system refused to activate on back roads.

There were other issues too. The car uses UWB (ultra-wideband) connectivity with smartphones to work without a key, but our car had trouble recognizing the phone, requiring me to spend several minutes fumbling around annoyingly every time I got out of the car. It also had trouble recognizing that my hands were on the wheel, even going so far as to disable the active steering system because it thought I wasn’t paying attention. (I did.) Finally, the entire active safety package threw errors twice, once requiring a technician with a laptop to fix.

Packing

After all the machine’s delays, I have to admit I was expecting a more polished experience. Still, I’d suggest not blaming the EX90 for that. I’m confident Volvo’s engineers can fix these issues before the SUVs hit dealerships, which Volvo says will happen sometime before the end of the year.

It’s a bit unfortunate that the active safety package falls behind the competition, but Volvo certainly has bigger plans for the EX90. The company didn’t put the lidar sensor on the roof just for aesthetic reasons. These things are expensive.

And that brings us to price. The EX90 starts at $79,995 for a dual-motor version with up to 310 miles of range, putting it in the same league as the Rivian R1S or Tesla Model X, two other premium SUVs with three rows of seating. However, the upcoming Polestar 3, which will be built on the same platform but lacks a lidar sensor on the roof and a third row of seats in the back, starts at $5,000 less.

Is the Volvo worth the extra cost? We’ll have to wait until we spend some time in the corporate cousin to say for sure. Stay tuned.