This Is The 435-Mile Range Volvo ES90 Before You’re Supposed To See It

Here at The Autopian, we’ve been eagerly looking forward to the Volvo ES90. Launching a new electric sedan in an age when sedans are still losing popularity and the future of electric vehicles is looking more and more like a share of the market rather than nearly all of it seems wild, but we’re thrilled by the concept. So how about the reality? Well, a seemingly official photo has surfaced ahead of the sedan’s debut, and on first glance, doesn’t it look a bit bulky?

This leak does appear to be an official Volvo press photo, as we’ve seen this virtual set and color grading before in other official Volvo press photos. Indeed, the background seems identical to the one shown in ES90 teaser photos, and given that the car in the teaser photos is also silver, this certainly seems to be it.

Let’s start under the skin. Volvo claims that an ES90 with the 106 kWh battery pack and dual-motor all-wheel-drive can go 435 miles of range on the optimistic WLTP cycle, or about 15 miles further than a dual-motor all-wheel-drive Mercedes-Benz EQS 450 4Matic. Considering that EQS manages 367 miles of range on the EPA testing cycle, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Volvo ES90 ends up being one of the longest-range EVs in America. What’s more, its 800-volt architecture means it can DC fast charge at up to 350 kW, meaning owners shouldn’t be waiting ages to juice up that big battery pack on road trips.

However, we need to talk about the styling of the ES90. Volvo’s mid-2010s reinvention saw the adoption of classically elegant styling and proportions, and although the ES90’s surfacing is fairly conservative but current standards, the car itself looks quite tall, especially compared to Volvo’s other big sedan, the incredibly handsome S90. So what gives? Well, although some automakers have flagship electric sedans that look lower, some of them come with compromises due to battery pack height. Take the Genesis Electrified G80, for example. It has a classically elegant silhouette, but the tradeoff is a high floor with little to no step-down from the sill, which limits headroom and may be part of the reason why you can’t get an electric G80 with a sunroof.

In contrast, it seems that Volvo’s attempting to hide the ES90’s battery pack with plastic cladding, which comes with the tradeoff of making this sedan appear a bit like an SUV that’s trying to fit in. It’s also worth noting that the ES90 rides on the same SPA2 platform as the EX90 crossover and the Polestar 3, both of which have fairly tall firewalls. If that’s a common module, it might help explain why there seems to be so much metal between the sill of the ES90 and the greenhouse.

Of course, it also probably doesn’t help that the Lidar unit on the roof sits like a taxi sign, although that fancy sensor promises to unlock a future world of more advanced autonomous driving than cameras and radar sensors can achieve alone. See, Volvo’s fitted the ES90 with something called its Superset tech stack, which includes two Nvidia Drive AGX Orin boards, capable of 508 trillion operations per second. That’s some serious computing power, although it does make you wonder about what it may cost to repair this system down the road should anything go wrong. On the plus side, Volvo seems to be using it responsibly, not making grand promises of high-level SAE automation but instead claiming it can enhance the efficacy of driver assistance.

However, the ADAS suite seems positively normal compared to the fact that the ES90’s battery pack is on the blockchain. That sounds dumb at first, but it’s Volvo’s way of keeping track of where the battery materials come from, along with its manufacturing footprint. There’s more feel-good to the ES90 too. A solid 29 percent of the aluminum, 16 percent of the polymers, and 18 percent of the steel in its construction is recycled.

Of course, there’s a whole lot of the ES90 we haven’t seen yet. For instance, I have a feeling that the interior will be gorgeous in Volvo tradition, but just how gorgeous is a question that’ll be answered on Wednesday. The Swedish car brand is properly unveiling the ES90 on March 5, and we’ll be watching closely.

Top graphic credit: Volvo

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