Every month, Erin Baker – one of the UK’s leading motoring experts – takes a different luxury car out for a spin and delivers her definitive review for Vogue. This month’s trip? Driving the Volvo EX90 around Pelican Hill.
California is the spiritual home of the electric car, thanks to its early adoption of batteries and its pioneering ideas around getting rid of smog, decarbonising driving and introducing sustainable materials. Tesla arrived on our shores a decade ago from Silicon Valley, full of West Coast ideas like vegan interiors, cool tech, vast sunroofs and a new design language that focused on simplicity and purity.
So it was unsurprising that Volvo, a Swedish car brand that normally launches its cars among the pine trees, rain and fjords of Scandinavia, should choose Pelican Hill, a smart, golf-set area in Newport Beach, to launch its flagship electric car, the EX90.
This bleached-wood and pale-leather leviathan is essentially a svelte electric version of the ultimate seven-seat SUV, the XC90. In both size and price, it towers above the rest of Volvo’s range, offering true comfort for seven adults (or some lanky teenagers), space in the boot and a large dollop of luxury with a starting price of just under £100,000 (but you’ll want to treat yourself with some beautiful interior accessories). For that, you get a maximum range of 374 miles – not bad for such a heavy car.
The clean, contemporary lines and the vast proportions of the EX90 suit the sharp, Hockney-esque light that bathes LA; the blazing sun bounces off the creases, curves and bonnets of cars on the freeway in every direction, and made a party of the sparkling Champagne paintwork on our Volvo. Everything was iridescent, uplifting and promising on our first morning at Pelican Hill with the car.
We eased off the cobbled, palm-fringed forecourt of the resort’s hotel, going against the flow of financiers and tech bros heading in the opposite direction with caddies and clubs for their corporate away day. You wind your way down the hill, the road weaving between terracotta Spanish villas nestled between the resort’s greens and bunkers, until you hit the East Coast Highway that runs along the coastline here, the Pacific crashing onto the beach every few seconds, spray lifting into the air.
Turn left, away from LA, past the tempting line of shops at Crystal Cove, where American stalwarts like Banana Republic and Trader Joe’s serve a wealthy breed who park their Tesla Cybertrucks, Mercedes G-Wagons and Aston Martins in the carpark. Continue on towards Laguna Beach, a smart hippyish settlement of weatherboarded shops and cafes. We passed some cool surf shacks en route, serving smoothies, lobster rolls and coffee, pastel umbrellas fluttering in the hot breeze.
The EX90 is equally at home gliding slowly through bustling towns and speeding down empty highways. It’s powerful, and utterly silent, with its big, heavy battery sitting low in the car, pinning the huge wheels to the tarmac through the corners. It feels smooth and safe, and so it should: Volvo is a brand built on a phenomenal safety record. It invented the three-point seatbelt and then released the patent free of charge to the rest of the world; it’s estimated that that act has saved over one million lives since. It was also one of the first brands to get its head round climate change; in 1972, they joined the UN’s first environment conference, recognising the damage cars did to the environment and pledging to do something about it. Critically, they invented the catalytic converter with a Lambda sensor, which remains one of the most important inventions for controlling tailpipe emissions.
The EX90 is the embodiment of both these pillars, with more safety systems than you’ll ever have experienced on a car before, including a sensor that tracks how many people and pets are in the car and won’t lock the car if there is anyone left inside.
The interior is also full of intelligent materials, from Kvadrat, a responsibly sourced wool, to bio-based Nordico, a new soft alternative to leather, and regenerated yarn for the carpet. Volvo also gives each owner a battery passport, allowing the buyer to see the car’s carbon footprint, where it was made, and with what critical raw materials.
But perhaps the best feature, which we indulged in as we climbed inland, through the rugged Santa Ana mountains, towards Temecula and Fallbrook, is the 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkins Audio System, which processes the sound via Dolby Atmos. The result is the best music system ever invented for a car. It lifts the whole experience into a new realm: it’s as if you’re sitting in a top-class recording studio. We didn’t want to get out for lunch at Callaway Winery, and sat in the shade for a while, watching a hare lolloping through the vines as Paolo Nutini enveloped us.
After lunch, the outside temperature had hit 40 degrees, but you can preset the EX90 interior to cool from the Volvo app on your phone. Very few cars offer such a refined, elegant place to sit and stay cool.
And that’s the beauty of the EX90: it’s all things to all people: a family wagon for seven, a status symbol for the driver who wants to own the road in style, a car for small families who want to fold the third row and have a vast boot, an elegant addition for weekend dog walks and everything in between. All with zero tailpipe emissions and the best sound system in town.
The car: The Volvo EX90
- Price: from £96,255
- Engine: electric
- Features: Bowers & Wilkins stereo, sustainable interior materials, air purifier, seven seats, heated seats and steering wheel, adaptive cruise control, parking camera, panoramic roof.
- Configure yours here.
