Volvo EX90 to get extensive 800-volt overhaul as part of a series of upgrades

The Volvo EX90 will undergo a substantial tech overhaul after less than a year on sale, Auto Express understands. The changes will see the electric SUV inherit the new ES90 saloon’s 800-volt electrical architecture for faster charging speeds and improved range.

Speaking on the eve of the new ES90’s world premiere, Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan told us: “We started off with 400 volts on the SPA2 architecture, and then we wanted to upgrade that – partly because of range and faster charging speeds; now we can put about 300km (186 miles) of range on in 10 minutes.

“If you look at China and you look at the Chinese competitors, nearly all the new models coming out are 800 volts and above,” he said. “And because a lot of the electronic components are done [in China], the price of the components is coming down.

“As we go forward, we’ll move everything to 800 volts – we’ll upgrade the EX90 in one of the model-year changes. And of course, the ES90 starts at 800 [volts], and the EX60 on SPA3 will come out on 800 [volts] as well. That helps us standardise across the platform.”

We understand the changes to EX90 production aren’t far off, though Rowan did reiterate that “it’s a pretty new car, so it’s not yet”. 

Volvo EX90 battery size and charging speed

Moving the SUV to this new electrical architecture could boost charging speeds by 40 per cent – from a 250kW peak in the current car, to as much as 350kW. Using the ES90’s charging curve as a guide, this could slash 10 to 80 per cent charge times to as little as 20 minutes. The current model requires around half an hour to complete the same task.

It’s unclear at this stage whether the SUV would also inherit the ES90’s 106kWh (102kWh usable) battery, which is slightly smaller than the 111kWh cell found in existing EX90s. Doing so might make the car more efficient, but it’s unlikely to have a meaningful impact on real-world range, which we expect to remain around the 370 to 380-mile mark.

Despite being revealed in 2022, the first EX90s are only just being delivered to UK customers. Further to this, Volvo is planning an imminent hardware upgrade to install the ES90’s dual NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin software platform on all existing EX90s. 

Alwin Bakkenes, Volvo’s head of global software engineering, told us it will give the cars “eight times the computing power; we’re going to be able to enhance the performance of the ADAS systems quite dramatically – and we want it to be available to all customers. 

“We are doing a retro-fit, so we are actually updating existing customer cars that have been manufactured with a previous generation of core computer to the same one that is in the ES90,” he told us. “We are doing this as a complimentary upgrade.”

Now you can buy a car through our network of top dealers around the UK. Search for the latest deals…