2024 Volvo XC90: Will There be a New XC90? For the sole purpose of saving people’s lives, Volvo is on a mission to revolutionize vehicle safety by developing cutting-edge new technologies and to make the automobile industry completely free of carbon emissions.
The Volvo EX90 is the name of the brand-new, fully electric flagship SUV that Volvo plans to release in November of this year (it was once going to be called Embla, and will eventually replace the current XC90 three-row SUV).
In order to improve its assisted driving and safety features, the EX90 will be equipped with a brand-new sensor package that can be found both inside and outside the vehicle. However, Volvo is already providing early details on its new safety suite of technologies before we get the opportunity to look at it.
Exterior Sensors
The 2019 Volvo EX90 will be equipped with a cutting-edge package of sophisticated safety technology that will include eight cameras, five radar units, 16 ultrasonic sensors, and a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) machine that faces ahead.
The system as a whole performs a continuous scan of the surroundings around the car, producing what Volvo refers to as an “invisible” 360-degree shield of safety. Meanwhile, the LiDAR system generates a 3D model of the route that lies in front of the vehicle.
Mounted on the top of the EX90, above the windshield, in an equipment pod, the LiDAR system will have the greatest possible location for detection and will be able to map people up to 250 meters, which is around 820 feet distance.
According to Volvo, this newly developed sophisticated technology will also be able to identify items that are difficult to notice, such as a black tire on a dark road at night, up to 120 meters, which is around 390 feet in advance.
According to Volvo, the brand-new LiDAR and sensor suite will ultimately be standard on all of the company’s vehicles. According to the company’s projections, the technology may cut the number of serious accidents by up to 20 percent and total accidents by 9 percent.
Joachim de Verdier, head of Safe Vehicle Automation at Volvo Cars, did admit to MotorTrend that there were quite a few headaches for the design team trying to integrate the new safety technology, who wasn’t a fan of the rooftop application initially.
This admission was made despite the fact that the design will be detailed in full at the reveal in November of this year. If the LiDAR sensors were mounted any lower, the expression “it’d be like having eyes in your knees” comes to mind. In the end, the safety engineering team was successful in getting its wishes met, but the design team had to put in a lot of effort to incorporate the technology and ensure that it would still function as a Volvo design.
Driver Understanding
That location is off-limits for Volvo. There is also new technology installed inside the EX90. For the monitoring system that Volvo refers to as “Driver Understanding,” the vehicle is equipped with two new cameras that face the driver.
After a short length of time, the car will begin to advise the driver and passengers to pay attention to the road ahead of them. The two cameras watch the face and eyes of the driver for any symptoms of distraction, sleepiness, or any other kind of inattentiveness.
Engineers at Volvo discovered that it was very common for the driver’s hand or arm to block a single camera that was mounted behind the steering wheel, so they added a second camera off to the side. Volvo claims that the company adopted a dual-camera setup, not for stereoscope vision or anything similar to that, but simply because it was very common.
In an interview with MotorTrend, a Volvo technical specialist named Mikael Aust stated that research indicated that most drivers maintain awareness and focus ahead approximately 80 percent of the time they are driving. Volvo claims that it has worked in allowances for “natural variations” in eye movement.
The new Driver Understanding system will also be able to determine whether or not a driver has been looking ahead for an excessive amount of time, which may be an indication that they have been disoriented and their thoughts are no longer focused on the job at hand.
Additionally, a capacitive touch steering wheel is used by the system in order to recognize when the driver has released their grip on the wheel as well as their inputs. The automobile will be able to sound warnings of progressively more intensity, and if there is no reaction, the vehicle will flash its hazards, safely pull over to the side of the road, and come to a stop.
According to Volvo, the driver monitoring system will not record the driver in any way, including on video or in photos, unless it is compelled to do so as part of an accident recording system.
The system requires a live feed of the driver’s face, but it has no need to keep any of that data. If it did, it would be an extra strain on the car’s limited data storage space, serving no meaningful use in the process.
In addition, the system will not initially be utilized for any other reasons, such as face recognition or the tracking of human vitals; nevertheless, other Volvo teams may in the future come up with a variety of use cases for the driver monitoring camera.
The new sensor suite and interior monitoring system are important milestones on Volvo’s path toward introducing a completely autonomous driving system one day, which the firm continues to insist is at least a few years away from becoming a reality. This is a voyage that will take place in the future.
According to Thomas Broberg, who is acting as the head of Volvo Cars’ safety center, “Thanks to our dedicated work on collision prevention systems, we’ve achieved significant progress on exterior sensing over the last several decades.” “One of the next frontiers in terms of our commitment to safety is interior sensing.
As our understanding expands and deepens, we will continue to acquire new information, design and implement more features in a methodical manner to assist in making the environment safer.”
Powertrains?
It is anticipated that the third version of the XC90 would be introduced within the next year, and it will be manufactured in the same South Carolina Volvo Car USA plant as the Polestar 3. Obviously, there will also be a kind that is created just for China.
The batteries will also be produced domestically by Volvo, and we anticipate that the EXC90 will ship with a 100 kWh pack at launch. This will provide this enormous SUV with a range of about 280 to 300 miles per charge.
The output from the two motors is anticipated to be close to that of the XC40 Recharge, which is 402 horsepower and 486 pound-feet of torque. The XC40 RC is a totally electric vehicle, while the XC90 Recharge is a plug-in hybrid vehicle, and it has a combined output of 455 horsepower. This presents a bit of a conundrum.
Because this is one of the primary benefits this has over BMW or Mercedes, the standard XC90 will need an engine that is more reasonably priced. Therefore, the 2.0-liter T5 and T6 should still be accessible, although with some enhancements to the technology associated with moderate hybridization.
3rd-Gen XC90 Design
The XC90 just just received 2023 updates, one of which was an increased battery capacity of 18 kWh for the T8 flagship. Because this model of the next generation has not been observed being tested, it is safe to assume that it will not be released in this year.
On the other hand, we are well aware of how it will seem as it travels down the road. The patent photos from the previous week were taken by the website Kolesa and converted into renderings that seem more lifelike.
They illustrate the all-electric version of the EXC90, which we anticipate will have more than 400 horsepower from its two motors and 100 kWh of battery capacity. However, the normal 2024 Volvo XC90 will have a similar appearance to the current model, and it will be produced on the same assembly line as the current model.
This new SUV has a design that is a more streamlined version of the previous one, as you can surely tell by looking at it. Even though they are more constrained in size and have sharper edges, the headlights have been designed to have the appearance of Thor’s Hammer. Additionally, the grille has been made more compact, and flush-fitted door handles contribute additionally to the vehicle’s streamlining.
Even more significant alterations are being made to the rear of this third-generation XC90, which will feature taillights that are more slender and that wrap over the trunk. In addition, the back overhang is much larger in order to accommodate electric vehicle batteries as well as the third row of seats, all of which contribute to the popularity of the Volvo.
The biggest SUV that Volvo offers is appealing to parents aged 40 and above all over the globe who are looking for a luxurious and unwinding school-run SUV manufactured by a respected company.
Because of this, performance and handling are not as important as the design’s ergonomics and focus on safety. Up until 2014, the XC90 was available with a 4.4-liter V8 engine; however, the only engine option now available is a 2.0-liter unit with forced induction.
It is thought that the SUV would be supported by the modular SPA2 (Scalable Product Architecture) platform. This platform will also be utilized by a similarly sized SUV named the Atlas, which will be manufactured by the Chinese carmaker Geely.