Volvo to launch five new EVs including ES90 saloon
Volvo is gearing up to launch the ES90 as its first electric saloon early next year – and it will serve as a premium flagship for the firm’s next wave of five advanced EV models.
As reported by Move Electric’s sister title Autocar, the new ES90 will rival the BMW i5 and Mercedes-Benz EQE is a sibling model to the combustion-engined S90 and will be revealed next March at an event in Stockholm, Sweden.
It has been developed with a focus on the Chinese market, but it will be sold worldwide. The ES90 will be closely related to the EX90 electric SUV and, much like that model, will serve as a technological figurehead rather than a driver of sales volume.
It will be followed in 2026 by the new EX60, which will sit on a new-generation platform and, as the EV equivalent of the bestselling XC60 in the core medium SUV segment, will be key to growing Volvo’s electric car sales. Volvo currently has three further EVs in development.
The new platform beneath the EX60 will accommodate a wider range of bodystyles, potentially including an electric estate. And while Volvo is still focused on ultimately becoming an EV-only brand, it has delayed plans to end the sale of plug-in and mild-hybrid models and is instead set to refresh and renew its combustion-engined lineup in the coming years.
Information leaked last year shows that the model has been developed under the codename V551 and will be produced at a plant owned by Volvo parent Geely in Zhejiang, China.
The leak reveals that the ES90 will be 4999mm long, making it marginally longer than the S90, and have a wheelbase of 3100mm to maximise interior space.
It will be offered in single-motor rear-wheel-drive and dual-motor all-wheel drive forms. Power outputs are likely to match the EX90’s, suggesting that the all-wheel-drive model will be offered with 402bhp as standard and 502bhp in Performance form.
It is also likely to offer many of the EX90’s safety features, potentially including the lidar scanner, and have a similar, near-£100,000 price. Power will come from a 111kWh battery that will offer up to 373 miles for the single-motor model.
The arrival of the ES90 and EX60 will give Volvo six EVs in the European market. Three further models are also in development, with Rowan saying that “some of them will be an electrification of our current models and some will take us into new segments”.
The only models in Volvo’s current combustion line-up that aren’t confirmed to get a direct electric equivalent are the S60 saloon and the V60 and V90 estates. Volvo has a rich history of estates, but the demand for such models has waned in recent years and they aren’t popular in the crucial Chinese market.
However, when asked about electric estates recently, Volvo CEO Jim Rowan hinted that the firm is looking into them. The prospect of electric estates could be heightened by the new SPA3 platform, because with all cars based on a single platform and tech stack, it would be easier to produce different variants on the same production lines, which would potentially enable Volvo to expand its line-up more efficiently.
