First Drive: The Volvo EX90 Is an Unfinished Electric SUV

Buggy software. Inactive features. Lit-up warning lights. These problems aren’t acceptable on a new car, especially a luxury EV that starts at $80,000.

Keith Barry, Consumer Reports Senior Autos Reporter.

By Keith Barry
Senior Autos Reporter

Updated July 15, 2025

2025 Volvo EX90 front driving — 2025 Volvo EX90

A few weeks ago, I went to the “soft opening” of a new coffee shop. They had some issues. For one, the register couldn’t print receipts, and I had to wait an especially long time while the barista dialed in the right grind for the beans. But the coffee itself was delicious. Despite those hiccups, I have no doubt the owners will be successful.

Until recently, inconveniences like not getting a receipt or slow service were limited to small businesses and startups, and most customers accepted it. Established companies that built big, heavy, expensive stuff—like three-row electric SUVs—understood that their products had to be close to perfect before going on sale. Unlike lattes, EVs like the EX90 cost $80,000, weigh three tons, and are designed to carry your family at 70 mph.

Today, however, manufacturers will deliver new cars with major issues, promising owners that a fix is coming. It’s why Consumer Reports’ brand-new Volvo EX90 SUV has the airbag warning light on.

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CR's Take What We Like What We Don't Like What We'll Keep an Eye On Safety and Driver Assistance Systems

I discovered the airbag issue while Michael Crossen, Consumer Reports’ lead auto technician, prepared me to take the electric SUV home for the night. Having already driven the car, he also talked me through using Volvo’s idiosyncratic key card, showed me which interior buttons might stop working, warned me that the EV battery was low because it wouldn’t charge the night before, and offered instructions on how to reset the radio. These were all skills I’d need for my time with this buggy SUV.

I got about five miles from our Auto Test Center before coming to my senses. If the airbag light in my own car was on, I’d take it straight to the dealership and get it fixed immediately. I wouldn’t risk the warning being correct and getting hurt in a crash because the airbags didn’t deploy. Why should I treat our Volvo any differently? I turned around and headed back to our track so Crossen could set up a service appointment. My first trip in the EX90 might have been short, but in those few minutes, I learned everything I needed to know about it so far: Despite its strengths, this vehicle arrived unfinished.

This $81,290 electric luxury three-row SUV is supposed to be the flagship vehicle for a new era of Volvo, an automaker that plans to go fully electric and shift its focus to cutting-edge technology. But if the EX90 is representative of where Volvo is headed, they need to make a U-turn.

As with every new car we test, we anonymously purchased an EX90 at a local dealership, so our experiences mirror those of the average consumer. Unlike other publications, this means we don’t review vehicles that come from the automakers themselves, which may be specially prepared beforehand.

Again, with every car we review, before we put it through our official, instrumented tests, we drive it at least 2,000 miles to make sure everything is working and to gather our initial impressions. Because the new cars we purchase are among the first examples built, they occasionally require some tweaks and repairs. That’s what happened with our Chevrolet Blazer EV, our Fisker Ocean, and our first Tesla Model 3. Even compared to those past examples, our EX90 has had an extraordinary number of issues for a vehicle that’s supposedly production-ready. In our first thousand miles with the car, it’s been back to the dealership twice, and we’ve encountered the following problems:

• The third-row seats wouldn’t fold correctly. The dealership addressed this but warned us that the seat motors might overheat.
• An airbag warning light stayed on for over a week, and the automatic crash notification/SOS system didn’t work until we downloaded and installed a software update.
• The following message occasionally takes over the display behind the steering wheel: “Starting Up: Your Volvo is getting ready. This will take a few minutes.” At these times, the car is temporarily undrivable. This happened when we tried to take it to the dealership to get the airbag issue fixed, and it took four minutes for the car to start.
• The audio system shuts down either in part or in whole. Sometimes it’s the radio that doesn’t work. Sometimes the phone won’t connect. Sometimes the screen goes blank.
• The climate controls can’t be used when the screen stops working, adding a new, literal twist on the word “freeze.”
• Blind spot warning (BSW) alarms sound when the car is stopped and not near obstacles or other cars
• On one occasion, the car wouldn’t charge. We tried multiple chargers that we knew worked with other vehicles, and none of them worked. The next day, the EX90 charged normally.

2025 Volvo EX90 key not found — Despite multiple tries, our car needed a software update to get both key cards working.

That’s not including the features that we paid for but aren’t active yet. For example, when Volvo first unveiled the EX90 in 2022, the automaker said it would be one of the first production vehicles to use lidar sensors for its active safety and driver assistance systems. Lidar, which uses lasers to precisely measure distances, is supposed to help the EX90 see pedestrians at night and prevent collisions with cars that run stop signs. It could also improve existing tech, such as the adaptive cruise control and lane centering assistance. We’ll have to wait a little bit longer to try these features, though, because the lidar on the earliest batch of EX90s is currently only in “learning” mode. Full functionality won’t be activated until later this year.

Other delayed features include a “light mode” for the display, automatic billing for public EV charging stations, and a function that keeps the battery from losing charge when the car is parked.

We judge vehicles’ and manufacturers’ reliability from our surveys of owners’ experiences, so we can’t say whether our experience is indicative of others. We’ll wait to hear what EX90 owners tell us when they respond to our next reliability survey.

Although other car testers and car publications seem to have mostly positive things to say about the EX90s they borrowed from Volvo, a quick glance at Volvo owner forums and Reddit threads indicates that we’re not the only ones having issues with our vehicle.

We contacted Volvo’s public relations department about our EX90’s specific problems. A spokesperson told us that installing an over-the-air software update known as version 1.3.18 would address many of the problems we encountered, and also turn on some inactive features we paid for. We installed that update as soon as our car got back from the dealership, and the airbag warning light immediately turned off. However, audio via Bluetooth, the radio, or other sources wouldn’t work, and unprovoked error messages persisted. We’ll continue to monitor how the car performs, but we think the effectiveness of the software update is beside the point. If software version 1.3.18 was required to fix the many bugs we encountered, then the EX90 should not have been sold to the public until 1.3.18 was ready and installed.

CR often warns buyers to avoid all-new or redesigned cars in their first model year. Our reliability survey results consistently show that all-new models usually have some teething problems. However, manufacturers tend to sort out those issues in subsequent years. We certainly hope that happens with the EX90. In the meantime, the Kia EV9 is an all-electric three-row SUV that costs $20,000 less than the Volvo, and hasn’t given us or surveyed owners the same sense of being a beta tester. (We’re also in the process of testing the Hyundai Ioniq 9, another three-row all-electric SUV.)

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What we bought: 2025 Volvo EX90 Twin Motor Electric Plus
Powertrain: 402-hp, dual electric motors; 111-kWh battery; 1-speed direct drive; all-wheel drive
MSRP: $79,995
Options: Pilot Assist, surround view camera, head-up display, Bose audio, heated rear seats, and heated steering wheel are included in the Plus trim
Destination fee: $1,295
Total cost: $81,290
Final assembly point: Ridgeville, SC

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Keith Barry

Keith Barry has been an auto reporter at Consumer Reports since 2018. He focuses on safety, technology, and the environmental impact of cars. Previously, he led home and appliance coverage at Reviewed; reported on cars for USA Today, Wired, and Car & Driver; and wrote for other publications as well. Keith earned a master’s degree in public health from Tufts University. Follow him on BlueSky @itskeithbarry.bsky.social.