Automotive Engineering - March 2023 - 12

ROAD READY
Volvo's electric high-wire act
EX90 exterior design chief T. Jon Mayer
and his team worked the new 7-passenger
SUV's aerodynamics to 0.29 Cd with the
help of flush door handles and glazin
and road wheel inserts.
use a dedicated skateboard structure.
One advantage of this architecture is
markedly better driving range than the
notoriously stingy Recharges, at a
company-projected 300 miles (482
km) under the EPA's test regime, and
600 kilometers (373 mi.) by Europe's
looser WLPT standards.
A skateboard platform displayed at the
Volvo calls its all-new EX90 SUV the safest
and most technically adept model in
the company's 95-year history, which
includes such achievements as the
world's first three-point automotive seat
belt in 1959. Even before this luxury EV
logs its first mile on global roads that take
more than 1 million human lives every
year, Volvo asserts the EX90 will eliminate
up to one in five serious injury accidents,
and one in 10 accidents overall.
That claim is based not on fuzzy
math, said Lotta Jakobsson, a 33-year
company veteran and specialist in injury
protection, but on Volvo's industryunique
accident database that's been a
wellspring of company safety innovations
since the 1970s.
" You have to first identify problems,
then understand the mechanisms of
accidents, and only then can you get
results, " Jakobsson told SAE Media.
" That data is key to our success, " and
underpins a long-term goal that no customers
will die or be seriously injured in
a Volvo - including while sitting still.
The EX90's onboard sensors and driver
monitor camera use AI algorithms to
detect not only distraction or drowsiness,
but driver intoxication and health
impairment. Cabin-based, inward-looking
radar can detect the breathing of
occupants, from a baby's breath to a
panting puppy, to ensure no one is left
12 March 2023
behind in a hot car. Led by an innovative
rooftop lidar unit from Floridabased
Luminar, the company says the
EX90 has enough standard hardware
aboard to allow safe, fully unsupervised
(SAE Level 4) driving at an unspecified
future date, with no human attention or
interventions required.
Bi-di charging
Still a full year from production in
Ridgeville, S.C., and China, with the
Charleston-area plant supplying all U.S.
showroom models by early 2024, the
EX90 is not the first Volvo EV. But
where the XC40 and C40 Recharge
rely on a modified ICE platform, the
larger, seven-seat EX90 is the first to
vehicle's reveal makes room for a 111-kWh
battery pack, with 107 kWh of usable energy.
A new nickel-rich, reduced-cobalt
chemistry boosts potency of these prismatic
cells sourced from China's CATL.
Volvo and other OEMs are racing to create
an American-centric supply chain for
both batteries and their raw-or-refined
input materials - or face the loss of lucrative
consumer tax credits under President
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
Any credits could soften the blow of
an estimated $80,000 price for a wellequipped
EX90 with a high-performance
powertrain. That figure compares to
those of three-row SUV rivals such as
the 845-hp/634 kW Rivian R1S (base
price $79,500) and the Mercedes-Benz
EQS SUV (base price $105,550), but still
well above the roughly $66,000 for a
smartly equipped, gasoline-powered
Volvo XC90. The company will park both
models uncomfortably side-by-side in
showrooms, but for the XC90, the clock
is already ticking toward 2030.
Dual permanent-magnet AC motors
with round windings generate 370 kW
(496 hp) and 910 Nm (lb-ft). In moreEX90's
skateboard platform displayed
at the vehicle's reveal uses a 111-kWh
battery pack, with 107 kWh of usable
energy. Prismatic cells from CATL feature a
new nickel-rich, reduced-cobalt chemistry.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
ALL IMAGES: VOLVO
Automotive Engineering - March 2023

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