Volvo ES90 - long-term review

How many Volvos were present at last month’s Festival of the Unexceptional? I lost count, to be honest. FOTU is an exceptional event, ironically, an unapologetic celebration of the sorts of cars that wouldn’t usually get within a country mile of a traditional automotive concours.

There’s a big nostalgic kick, of course, and it’s a reminder that machinery that was once omni-present is now vanishingly rare. This seems to be a major draw for Generation Z (and Alpha), for whom a 40-year-old Fiat Regata excites the same sort of fervour as a Ferrari F40.

The Volvo 960 also charms, and there were a few of those knocking around at FOTU. That’s the ES90’s square-cut Nineties forebear, currently surfing a pop-cultural wave thanks to its supporting role in Apple TV’s magnificently odd show, Severance. The car cast looks random, but these things never are; the 960 must say something about Mark Scout, the character who drives it.

The new ES90 is anything but random. The second Volvo to be launched that uses the SPA2 architecture, the refinement on offer here would dazzle anyone stuck in the Nineties. There’s little trace of wind or tyre noise, to the extent that it’s almost Severance spooky.

This is the way of things with electric cars, of course, especially at the high end. The ES90 glides imperiously down the road like some sort of Scandinavian star destroyer. Its damping is compliant without being lollopy, although we’ve noticed that pock-marked surfaces – of which there are plenty in the UK – disrupt its serenity. Issues with its secondary ride, perhaps.

But these are all old-school car-related observations. Volvo’s chief technical officer, Anders Bell, recently claimed that the company now has more in common with Apple than it does Volvo in 1998. Punchy words. Rather than a mish-mash of isolated electronic control units – often from different suppliers – Volvo has developed the so-called Superset tech stack. This consists of a single set of hardware and software modules, developed through a closed loop process.

The ES90 benefits from a dual Nvidia Drive AGX Orin processor that can carry out 508 trillion operations per second. This is obviously mind-boggling, yet the credit card-style key still needs a transponder to open the car, and that needs to be inductively charged. Or download the App that turns your smartphone into a key. Personally, I prefer an old-fashioned physical item. You know where you are with one of those.

Get locked out and you’ll be denied access to a blissful sanctuary of a cabin. The ES90’s interior really is sublimely Scandinavian. Infotainment is via a central 14.5in touchscreen, although the driver gets a smaller 9in display for key read-outs. Surely a head-up display makes that redundant?

It’s similar in configuration to the EX90 and related Polestar 3, but there are subtle graphic variations between each of them. A little Volvo graphic on the lower icons display is the gateway to further info, including a quick key to silence lane departure and speed limit warning. Although the warning chimes are much less infuriating than some. Six bespoke ambient light themes are available, and the interior illumination uses a non-flickering part of the natural light spectrum to reduce ocular fatigue.

The ES90 comes with built-in Google services, including Google Assistant, Maps and Waze, the Google Play store, although Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are also standard. It also has 5G built in. The climate system encompasses four-zone climate control with an air purifier, B-pillar ventilation, a heated steering wheel and wiper blades. A heat pump is standard, which should help later in the year. The ES90 feels more autumnal, somehow.

As ever, I’ll stress test the range. Volvo claims 398 fully charged; I’m currently seeing 330.