- The Volvo EX90 has a maximum EPA rating of 310 miles.
- That’s with 21-inch wheels.
- In the first real-world highway range test, the flagship Swedish EV didn’t come close to its official rating.
The Volvo EX90 is a 5,400-pound all-electric luxury SUV that’s very comfortable and quiet. It also has a maximum EPA range rating of 310 miles and can DC fast charge at up to 250 kilowatts, so it should be a good road-tripping machine.
But as is sometimes the case with cars, not just EVs, the rated range and fuel consumption can be tough to match in the real world. This brings us to the EX90’s highway efficiency, which was put to the test for what could possibly be the first time by prolific EV tester Kris Rifa.
Rifa rented a brand-new EX90 in Spain to do all sorts of testing with it, including a highway range test using real-world efficiency data. This particular car was the Performance variant with 21-inch wheels, which in the United States is rated at 310 miles on a full charge.
Before we get into it, you should know that Rifa didn’t drive the car until it died. Instead, he drove on a Spanish highway at a constant speed of 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour). After a while, he turned around and headed back toward where he started so that the elevation change would have no impact on the result.
The final range estimate was calculated using the real-world energy consumption and the usable capacity of the battery. On the day of the test, the weather was pretty much perfect, with very mild winds and a temperature of around 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius).
After doing the loop and stopping at the same Ionity DC fast charging station where he started, the EX90 reported an average energy efficiency of 2.38 miles/kilowatt-hour (26 kilowatt-hours/100 kilometers). Interestingly, the car doesn’t report energy consumption with decimals, so it’s hard to gauge exactly how much it used.
Taking the EX90’s 107 kWh usable battery capacity into account, the real-world range at 75 mph is nearly 255 miles (410 km). With energy losses of 3% thrown into the mix, the range drops to 247 miles (399 km). That’s not exactly bad for a 5,400-pound family hauler, but it’s still short of the 310-mile EPA rating, which, to be fair, is calculated on a combined cycle.
What’s interesting is that the real-world energy consumption shown on the car’s screen is really close to the window sticker: 2.38 miles/kWh versus the EPA’s 2.5 miles/kWh (40 kWh/100 miles) for the version with 21-inch wheels. That figure would probably go up if the average speed were a little lower—at InsideEVs, we do highway range tests at 70 mph. We’ll report back when we get our hands on the new EX90 here in the United States, but until that happens, this is our best look yet at the Swedish EV’s high-speed efficiency performance.
