Volvo ES90 - long-term review

Why is there no consensus on the positioning of the hazard warning button? Ergonomics is a science, yet so much is still random and occasionally even abstract in car interiors. As it happens, the Volvo’s is easy to reach but a little small for my liking and lacking in haptic feel.

Time in the ES90 confirms that Volvo is on an ergonomics journey. This is a company whose principal switchgear was once so epically chunky you could use it in the depths of a Swedish winter while wearing gloves. I can’t imagine getting away with that in the ES90, a car – like so many others – that has drifted somewhat from first principles.

Volvo made its name as a stout protector of the driver; its engineer Nils Bohlin invented the modern three-point safety belt in 1959, and plenty of safety-oriented innovation followed. Now we have a situation in which the car hectors the driver for momentary inattention, a transgression 99 per cent likely to be caused by the need to switch off the most annoying bits of the ADAS.

This is something I’m training myself to do before exiting my driveway, so I don’t get told off. Or drive into a neighbour’s car. Unfortunately, switching between Absolute 80s and BBC 6 Music is also enough to trigger the admonition. Unless the little camera monitoring me isn’t working, which is often the case for reasons I can’t fathom.

Call me grouchy if you want, but there’s much stuff on modern cars that I really don’t want or need. I certainly don’t want a car telling me off. Or informing me that I seem tired, a comment you might get from one of your less self-aware friends, and certainly don’t need from a machine before it advises you to have a sodding tea break.

Volvo is far from the only offender, of course, but the issue is thrown into sharper relief because the ES90’s interior – and general behaviour – is otherwise so restful. The driving position is exemplary, the seats superb. And though it scopes out the uncharted conceptual terrain between elevated crossover and conventional saloon, you get a sense of command without feeling that you’re sitting on top of the car rather than in it. Although there are nuclear submarines with better over-the-shoulder visibility than this.

Also, we can’t leave the gripes without mentioning the need to make several prods of the touchscreen to adjust the door mirrors or steering wheel. Is it just me that regularly needs to make small adjustments on the fly? If you’ve selected reverse the display will not budge from the rear camera feed. In fact, that view remains on the screen far too long after you’ve gone back into Drive.

It’s detail stuff but important. More positive news next time.