Volvo to upgrade EX90 to 800 volts

Following the recently presented ES90, Volvo Cars will be using 800-volt batteries in other models. The EX90, which is already available with 400 volts, will also switch to 800-volt technology in future.

As CEO Jim Rowan explains to AutoExpress, this change for the EX90 will not come with a facelift (the SUV flagship has been on the market for less than a year), but much earlier with a model year change. “As we go forward, we’ll move everything to 800 volts – we’ll upgrade the EX90 in one of the model-year changes” Rowan is quoted as saying.

A battery voltage of 800 volts is not an end in itself, but if used correctly it can enable greater efficiency and, above all, significantly shorter charging times. At 500 amps, the CCS standard is limited to 200 kW power at 400 volts, and even with the increase to 650 amps, more than 200 kW charging power is only possible for a short time. With 800 volts, twice as much is theoretically possible. However, there are also 800-volt systems that do not go far beyond the 200 kW that can also be achieved with 400 volts, but can maintain this level for a long time.

When looking at the technical data of the new ES90, however, the difference is clear: the all-wheel drive variants (106 kWh) can charge with up to 350 kW at the peak and reach the 80 per cent charge level after 20 minutes of charging. Although the EX90 Twin Motor (111 kWh) utilises the absolute maximum of the 400-volt technology with a peak of 250 kW, it requires a full 30 minutes for the comparable standard charging process. With such large batteries and in the price range above 80,000 euros, ten minutes is a big difference for customers.

Rowan told AutoExpress that the planned switch is due to the faster charging speeds and “partly” to the range – the EX90 with 800 volts should thus be more efficient, but probably not (much) more expensive. “If you look at China and you look at the Chinese competitors, nearly all the new models coming out are 800 volts and above,” the Volvo CEO said. “And because a lot of the electronic components are done [in China], the price of the components is coming down.

While Rowan did not mention smaller models such as the EX30, he said that 800-volt technology will be the new standard for future electric vehicles from Volvo. The EX60 on SPA3 will come out on 800 [volts] as well,” said Rowan. A corresponding saloon called the ES60 is then also on the cards. Whether there will also be an electric Volvo estate – an EV60 or EV90 – is not yet known.

The EX90 will not only have its system voltage adjusted, but also a hardware upgrade. The dual NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin software platform of the ES90 will also be used in the EX90. This should increase the computing power to eight times that of the current system.

“We want it to be available to all customers,” Alwin Bakkenes, Head of Global Software Development at Volvo, is quoted as saying in the report. This also involves retrofitting EX90s that have already been delivered: “We are doing a retro-fit, so we are actually updating existing customer cars that have been manufactured with a previous generation of core computer to the same one that is in the ES90. We are doing this as a complimentary upgrade.”

autoexpress.co.uk