Living with a Volvo ES90: I wasn’t keen on this car when it launched, can I learn to love it?

This is my new Volvo ES90, and I’m going to be living with it for the next six months to see if the Swedish brand is still worthy of being in the conversation as one of the best posh car makers around.

Over the past six months I’ve become a bit of a Volvo fanboy having lived with the Volvo V60 and XC90. However, the ES90 is part of the firm’s new generation of cars – which means new technology and new interiors as part of a new electric car platform.

I was left a bit underwhelmed at the car’s UK launch – it’s big and comfy, but I miss the interior design of the old models and visibility out of the car is rubbish – so I was keen to live with one to see if time really is a healer.

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Introduction to my Volvo ES90

What exactly is a Volvo ES90? Well, it’s an electric saloon car with a sprinkling of SUV-ness about it. It sits high off the ground like an SUV – my four-year-old actually struggles to get in and out – and has kinda chunky bodywork, but then there’s a sleeker roof and bootline like a saloon.

It looks good, but it is completely and utterly massive. Like, doesn’t fit in a parking space massive.

You have a choice of single-motor or twin-motor. The latter has a ludicrous power output in ‘Performance’ guise, so I opted for the standard model.

Called Single Motor Extended Range, it has 333hp meaning it’s more than quick enough for everyday life, though despite the name it has a smaller battery than twin-motor cars and therefore less range in official tests. At 407 miles, though, it’s still mighty impressive.

I picked Mulberry Red paint, which is a deep red that my son is convinced is actually purple. Whatever it is, it looks lovely with the ES90’s smart design.

Although I have the standard powertrain, I opted for the higher-spec Ultra trim, for no other reason than you get the fantastic Bowers & Wilkins sound system upgrade. It’s incredible.

Other upgrades include an electrochromic panoramic roof, which essentially lets you tint the glass if it’s sunny. It’s neat, if a little glitchy in my car. The ventilated seats have been a game-changer in the recent heatwave.

Ultra models also get ‘high-definition pixel headlights’. The idea is you can leave your full beam on and it adapts the light so you don’t blind oncoming drivers. However, I turn these off because, interestingly, they have the same issue I had with them on my old V60 – they’re too sensitive to your surroundings, such as street lights and road signs as well as other cars, so they’re constantly flickering and adjusting.

As tested, this Volvo ES90 with the Single Motor Extended Range powertrain in Ultra trim comes to £78,105, with the only optional extra being the Mulberry Red paint at £845.

Why am I running a Volvo ES90?

Quite frankly, because Volvo has huge shoes to fill, and I’m not convinced it’s living up to its previous high standards. I’ve driven the ES90 briefly on the UK launch, and also tested the EX90 SUV when that was launched in the UK, too.

Both cars have left me a bit underwhelmed, with interiors that are undeniably still high quality, but have colder designs with less character than their predecessors. And like many modern cars, they’ve both ditched many physical buttons in favour of controlling most functions through the screen. This is rarely anything other than annoying, as is the case here.

Alongside this, the EX30 my colleague Jamie Edkins ran was laden with annoying glitches in the software and a key that only sometimes let you in the car. We’ve also run a Polestar 3, which shares tech with Volvo, and regularly got locked out of that, too.

However, I’m willing to accept that perhaps my reticence to embrace this new generation of Volvos comes from some kind of resistance to change. I loved the outgoing Volvos, but these ones are new and different. So I want to live with one, and see if there are any aspects that I quickly get used to, or whether my initial disappointment is justified.

First impressions of the Volvo ES90

A few weeks into ES90 ‘ownership’ and my first impressions haven’t been great. Sure, it does lots of things I want my car to do – it has big, comfy seats, a fantastic sound system, plenty of room in the back for a child seat, and it’s surprisingly efficient for such a big, heavy car.

But there are loads of small annoyances that when added together just make the ES90 quite frustrating to live with. The high floor means I’ve found it really hard to find the right driving position, and you have to go into the screen to move the steering wheel.

Rear visibility is appalling, and it’s only okay out the front. The electrochromic roof (of my car) flickers when you stop the car. The auto full beam doesn’t work properly.

And then there’s that stupid, button-free key. I won’t add to the thousands of words journalists have written about the key – in this update, at least – but just imagine you’ve spent the day at the office, and when you leave you find out your trains have been cancelled. So you spend four hours on buses and tubes and when you finally get back to your car it just doesn’t open.

Well that’s what happened to me, and you can imagine the feelings I had towards this car as I was fruitlessly tugging at the door handles. I feel like keyless entry is something that was figured out years ago, why is it suddenly a problem?

I think news editor Jamie Edkins summed it up nicely after borrowing the car for a long weekend. “It’s a nice car, and I kept starting to warm to it,” he said. “And then it would do something bafflingly annoying and take me right back to square one.”

I’m tempted to say it feels like a next generation car… a generation before it’s ready. Stay tuned for my next update to see if a few more weeks with the car helps me learn to live with its quirks, and see if the pros outweigh the cons.

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