Tech-Filled Volvo ES90 Will Do Up To 435 Miles On A Charge

The Volvo ES90, the Swedish brand’s first crack at a fully electric exec saloon, is just a couple of weeks away from its reveal. Set to offer a laid-back Scandi alternative to the likes of the BMW i5, Audi A6 E-Tron and Mercedes EQE, it sounds like it’s going to offer plenty of range in addition to its suite of technology.

At the core of the ES90 will be an Nvidia Drive AGX Orin operating system, which can apparently do 508 trillion operations per second. We checked, and that’s quite a lot.

Unsurprisingly, there is much talk of AI functionality, which will either interest you or cause you to sigh in despair and wonder why we keep having this stuff shoved down our throats without asking for it. In the case of the ES90, it’ll be powering some of the car’s safety systems.

Volvo’s also packing the ES90 with what it calls Safe Space Technology, which is designed to stop potential harm befalling anyone that even goes near the car. This will be provided by – deep breath – one lidar sensor (that’s the taxi light looking thing on the roof in these teaser images), five radar sensors, eight cameras and 12 ultrasonic sensors, all of which are set to combine to make sure everyone’s out of harm’s way.

What about actual car stuff? Well, the ES90 will be based on the same SPA2 architecture that underpins the seven-seat EX90 SUV as well as the Polestar 3. We imagine, then, that it’ll get some of the same dual-motor configurations as those cars do, although we wouldn’t be surprised to see an entry-level single-motor version either.

It’s set to get a new 800V electric architecture, allowing for faster charging – Volvo quotes 20 minutes for 10 to 80 per cent on a rapid charger – and plenty of range, with up to 435 miles quoted on the (admittedly optimistic) WLTP cycle.

Volvo’s latest round of teaser images give us our best look yet at the ES90’s design, showing that it’s shifting away from a traditional three-box saloon profile and, as lots of other saloons are at the moment, gaining a more sloping, fastback-ish rear – not dissimilar to a stretched Polestar 2.

The presence of two big lighting elements running up the rear deck initially made us think the ES90 might follow the Polestar 4 in ditching a rear windscreen, but thankfully, these latest images show that that won’t be the case. We’ll get a look at the car in full on 5 March.