My first month driving the EX90
I have had my EX 90 for about a month now, and I wanted to share my first experiences. I would also be very keen to hear from others and their experiences.
The good: First of all, I have to say it is a genuinely good car, and I am very happy with it, so all the points in the latter sections need to be seen in relation to the overall good experience. I particularly enjoy the ride quality, how the suspension absorbs even rougher bumps in the road, and how the steering always gives you good feedback. The “auto“ setting for the one-pedal driving took some getting used to, but now I’m totally in love with it. The Bowers & Wilkins sound system is fantastic, and I sometimes stay a bit longer in the car to finish listening to a piece of music. Thanks to the excellent sound system, the time spent waiting while charging the car passes fairly quickly as well. I have been driving hybrid cars for the last 12 years, and this is my first EV, so I had to learn to deal with range anxiety. I have quickly learned though that the range indication in the display is decently accurate and doesn’t have significant fluctuations. On a 90% charge, it shows a range of 380km (236 miles), and I achieved that even in the cold winter temperatures of the last month. Of course, a more extended range would be ideal, but I can only measure it against what was promised, and I feel that that is very much in line. Lastly, I want to point out that Volvo support (more on that later) is excellent, and the employees were friendly and went out of their way to help me!
The bad: It might sound stupid, but the first thing I have to call out here is the glove box: it has a massive hatch which feels super wobbly and cheap, and the actual usable space behind it is tiny. Even when I received the car and the Volvo employee showed me how to open it close the glove box, she even struggled to get it to close, and so it does not come as a surprise to me that now the hatch does not open anymore and the support team advised me to visit the dealership to get it repaired. You can only open the glove box via a button on the centre display, which is just one example where I feel the design is not thought through. Another example is that in the XC 90, you could easily store a drinking bottle upright in the door on both the driver and passenger side; this is no longer possible in the EX 90. I don’t understand why they got rid of the handles in the roof to help hoist yourself in and out of the car. When I had my 80-year-old aunt trying to get into and out of the passenger seat, she was grappling for something that should’ve been there but wasn’t. The final point of frustration I want to call out is the bonnet and how you open it: the car has a frunk, which is excellent, but Volvo spent no time or energy thinking about the fact that now the bonnet has a very different use case scenario than with a combustion engine car where you only ever open the bonnet in case of a breakdown or maybe twice a year to check oil or washer liquid, which means the process to open the bonnet is cumbersome an impossible to do without getting your hands dirty. I would have expected a better solution there.
The bizarre: I ordered the car on the 17th of January 2023 CE, and I only had it delivered at the end of January this year. Considering that a 12-month delay was explained with the software requiring more work, I am flabbergasted at how bug-ridden the software still is. When you try to reverse into a parking slot, the car randomly hits the break full force and then proudly displays a message that it intervened and hit the brakes. The only problem is that there was no reason to do so, but it certainly scares me every single time. Until the last update a couple of days ago, the car was randomly shouting at me to keep my hands at the steering wheel when they were at the steering wheel. When going through a car wash and wanting to fold in the outside mirrors, I typically have to give it two or three attempts before the button reacts. It had already happened twice that the boot lid closed on its own whilst I was still leaning into the boot, forcing me to jump away from the car. I also had at least once a problem with the buttons to fold back the seats in the third row. In the XC 90, which I drove for six months before the EX 90 got delivered, I felt the system to engage and manage the cruise control was intuitive and worked without a glitch. I cannot even remotely imagine what drove the designers at Volvo to dismiss this workable system and replace it with a significant one. Now, to engage the cruise control, you can press the steering wheel button, but you have to push down the gear selector lever. I don’t mind when it comes to engaging the cruise control. Still, it is downright ridiculous that if you want to reengage the cruise control at the same speed, you have to hold down the gear selector lever for 3 to 5 seconds, and considering that this is the most used feature, this makes absolutely no sense.
Final thoughts: It seems like the world is becoming increasingly scary. Still, there is a relatively easy solution to achieve world peace: Take all the people writing manuals, designing user interfaces, or engineering software for car manufacturers and force them to work in the defence industry instead. Nobody could ever figure out how to fire any weapon, and even if you did, it would simply not work. World peace!
I have had my EX 90 for about a month now, and I wanted to share my first experiences. I would also be very keen to hear from others and their experiences.
The good: First of all, I have to say it is a genuinely good car, and I am very happy with it, so all the points in the latter sections need to be seen in relation to the overall good experience. I particularly enjoy the ride quality, how the suspension absorbs even rougher bumps in the road, and how the steering always gives you good feedback. The “auto“ setting for the one-pedal driving took some getting used to, but now I’m totally in love with it. The Bowers & Wilkins sound system is fantastic, and I sometimes stay a bit longer in the car to finish listening to a piece of music. Thanks to the excellent sound system, the time spent waiting while charging the car passes fairly quickly as well. I have been driving hybrid cars for the last 12 years, and this is my first EV, so I had to learn to deal with range anxiety. I have quickly learned though that the range indication in the display is decently accurate and doesn’t have significant fluctuations. On a 90% charge, it shows a range of 380km (236 miles), and I achieved that even in the cold winter temperatures of the last month. Of course, a more extended range would be ideal, but I can only measure it against what was promised, and I feel that that is very much in line. Lastly, I want to point out that Volvo support (more on that later) is excellent, and the employees were friendly and went out of their way to help me!
The bad: It might sound stupid, but the first thing I have to call out here is the glove box: it has a massive hatch which feels super wobbly and cheap, and the actual usable space behind it is tiny. Even when I received the car and the Volvo employee showed me how to open it close the glove box, she even struggled to get it to close, and so it does not come as a surprise to me that now the hatch does not open anymore and the support team advised me to visit the dealership to get it repaired. You can only open the glove box via a button on the centre display, which is just one example where I feel the design is not thought through. Another example is that in the XC 90, you could easily store a drinking bottle upright in the door on both the driver and passenger side; this is no longer possible in the EX 90. I don’t understand why they got rid of the handles in the roof to help hoist yourself in and out of the car. When I had my 80-year-old aunt trying to get into and out of the passenger seat, she was grappling for something that should’ve been there but wasn’t. The final point of frustration I want to call out is the bonnet and how you open it: the car has a frunk, which is excellent, but Volvo spent no time or energy thinking about the fact that now the bonnet has a very different use case scenario than with a combustion engine car where you only ever open the bonnet in case of a breakdown or maybe twice a year to check oil or washer liquid, which means the process to open the bonnet is cumbersome an impossible to do without getting your hands dirty. I would have expected a better solution there.
The bizarre: I ordered the car on the 17th of January 2023 CE, and I only had it delivered at the end of January this year. Considering that a 12-month delay was explained with the software requiring more work, I am flabbergasted at how bug-ridden the software still is. When you try to reverse into a parking slot, the car randomly hits the break full force and then proudly displays a message that it intervened and hit the brakes. The only problem is that there was no reason to do so, but it certainly scares me every single time. Until the last update a couple of days ago, the car was randomly shouting at me to keep my hands at the steering wheel when they were at the steering wheel. When going through a car wash and wanting to fold in the outside mirrors, I typically have to give it two or three attempts before the button reacts. It had already happened twice that the boot lid closed on its own whilst I was still leaning into the boot, forcing me to jump away from the car. I also had at least once a problem with the buttons to fold back the seats in the third row. In the XC 90, which I drove for six months before the EX 90 got delivered, I felt the system to engage and manage the cruise control was intuitive and worked without a glitch. I cannot even remotely imagine what drove the designers at Volvo to dismiss this workable system and replace it with a significant one. Now, to engage the cruise control, you can press the steering wheel button, but you have to push down the gear selector lever. I don’t mind when it comes to engaging the cruise control. Still, it is downright ridiculous that if you want to reengage the cruise control at the same speed, you have to hold down the gear selector lever for 3 to 5 seconds, and considering that this is the most used feature, this makes absolutely no sense.
Final thoughts: It seems like the world is becoming increasingly scary. Still, there is a relatively easy solution to achieve world peace: Take all the people writing manuals, designing user interfaces, or engineering software for car manufacturers and force them to work in the defence industry instead. Nobody could ever figure out how to fire any weapon, and even if you did, it would simply not work. World peace!