(upbeat music)
- Here we have the Volvo S90 Recharge
and I got it because it might be
the best plug in hybrid on the market.
That's not what we're gonna look at first.
Holy frick.
The sound system in this thing is fricking amazing.
Just, come on over here, Bran.
Look at this.
It's a $3,000 option,
but holy balls is it ever worth it.
I think this one down here is made of Kevlar.
This one's aluminum.
That one's aluminum,
covered in this nice stainless steel.
Looks amazing.
In the center we have a tweeter
and then two center speakers.
There's 19 in total,
so 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
16, 17, 18..
Then, the star of the show.
Back in here we have a 9.8 inch subwoofer
that's bonded directly to the chassis.
Come look at this, Brandon.
It being bonded directly to the chassis
means it transmits all of those vibrations
through the entire car straight to your butt.
I've felt a lot of bass in a car before,
but like it's not the same
when it's like your buddy's Jetta
and he has two 20s in the trunk
and the lid comes off when you play it.
This is like the most refined sub bass
that I've ever felt in a car.
It'll make you go to the movies
and be like huh that's a pretty casual
subwoofer they have there.
I wish it was better.
Let's have a listen.
I went ahead and got a title subscription
just for these speakers.
Normally, Spotify quality is more than good enough.
In here, you notice the difference.
(upbeat music with bass)
It's just so good.
I'm sorry that my mic probably
isn't really doing it justice.
Right now I have it on stage mode
with the subwoofer just cranked
'cause I really like the bass.
(upbeat music)
It's so good.
But if we come over here and put it in studio mode
and reset it.
It's the flattest EQ I've ever heard in a car.
(upbeat music)
Well, I didn't even know it tailed off like that before.
You just hear these little details in your songs
that you've never heard before.
It's absolutely amazing.
We're going to do proper sound testing stuff on it later.
I'm guessing based off my ears,
that it's almost completely flat in this,
and we'll verify that with a graph right here.
Anyway, let's look at the actual car bits.
Now we have the Inscription model of the S90,
which is just straight grandpa spec,
like all of this chrome up here.
It does look really good.
Like all the Volvos for the last 10 years
have looked great.
Especially like,
you have the nice Thor's Hammer headlight, awesome.
I would get the R spec,
it just blacks everything out.
Moving around over here.
Right here we have our charging port.
So, this gets you like 60 kilometers of range,
pure electric.
Now, I am a little disappointed there's no fast charger,
but again, whatever.
It's a plug in hybrid.
If you don't fast charge,
you just use the engine.
It's fine.
Let's take a look at that.
In total we have 450 horsepower
and 312 of it is coming from this guy right here.
It's a 2 liter 4 cylinder that makes 312 horsepower
thanks to a big ol' snail on the back there.
This used to come as a supercharged
and turbocharged engine.
I'm really glad that it only has a turbo now.
You don't need the supercharger when you have the electric,
and it's just one less thing to fail in a car
that has so many things that can fail.
Get the 10 year warranty.
Wow, this hood's really high.
Look at that.
That would probably hit the roof in my parking garage.
Holy (beep).
The rear wheels are driven entirely by electric,
so they contribute 143 horsepower
by 228 foot pounds of torque.
Now, that's just awesome,
because you can take off,
the electric gets you going,
and then by the time it's starting to peter out,
the turbo's spooled up
and you just rocket it.
It's kind of down here.
I can't really see it,
but whatever.
Trunk's nice and big.
You can fit like 4-5 bodies in there, easy.
Our first really big problem though is this area.
The trunk might be big,
but this is a Volvo when it's not a wagon.
That's just dumb.
Why would you buy the S90 when the V90 exists?
Volvos, wagons.
Volvo, Canada?
Get us a V90, please.
I want to drive it.
Anyway, Brandon.
You're really wrong.
Wagons are sick.
Let's get in the backseat.
Back here, we have the executive seating.
I can do fun things like annoy the person in front of me,
by just moving their seat back and forth.
You know?
Want more leg room? Move 'em up.
Wanna crush 'em? I can.
Excellent.
We also have must haves of saloons, like you know.
The good ol' peasant blockers here.
Even blocking the rear peasants.
We even have control of the sun roof in the back,
although I'm not going to do that,
cause I don't think this camera will be too happy about it.
Aside from that, we have your typical comforts
that you have in luxury cars.
You have climate control back here,
rear heated seats, ventilated is an option.
You normally don't have this,
but there's also a little cigar ashtray.
One thing that's kind of weird about this,
is that in here where you normally have storage,
there's almost none.
But there's a good reason for that.
All of your batteries are right in here.
I appreciate this placement,
because in some other hybrids,
they'll have just a bunch of your
trunk space taken up with it,
or like you won't be able to
push down your seats properly,
because there's a big old battery in the way.
Getting in the driver's seat,
like hot damn is this a nice place to be.
These are some of the most comfortable seats
that I've ever felt in a car.
There's heaps of adjustments.
You can do the length of the seat,
the size of the bolsters, lumbar,
forward, backward, all of that good stuff.
So comfortable, absolutely love it.
Everything in here is real
genuine leather that cows died for.
All of the wood that you see here
is actual oak that trees died for.
It's all very nicely put together.
It's a very premium spot to be,
despite the fact that like,
the chrome and the wood and the stuff
is again, very grandpa spec.
I appreciate it, though.
To turn the S90 on,
you just turn this little dial to the right,
and to turn it off you might expect
you'd turn it to the left, but nope.
That's also to the right as well.
Kinda weird, but whatever.
Our front here we have Android Automotive.
It's easily one of the best infotainment systems
on the market right now.
It works great and you're able to have
different peoples' google profiles in there
and match to your key,
so you get in and your Spotify title,
what have you just signs into your account.
Freaking awesome.
Now if you want to learn more about Android Automotive,
we went into a lot of detail
in our Volvo XC40 Recharge Review,
but again the TL;DR: freaking awesome.
The only thing that concerns me
is that they haven't added Android Auto
or Apple Car Play into it yet.
They say it's coming.
but they also said that it was coming back
when we did the XC40 review in December,
so when will that arrive?
Will it ever arrive?
Probably.
How much do you trust Volvo and Google?
For media controls,
we get nice physical buttons
and even though the climate control
is entirely touch screen,
I don't hate it.
Like, it works pretty well.
I just in general haven't been annoyed by it.
Even my father who's over 60,
had no trouble just navigating this
and getting it all to work.
Good job, Volvo, I guess.
The funny thing is, though,
watching videos from like 2018
when they first put out the system,
people had no clue how to use it.
They hated it,
and now a couple years later it's all perfectly fine.
It makes sense now.
To shift into drive you just pull back
on this incredibly fancy Ordio4 shifter.
Just like that, and uh,
(engine rev)
Now I'm in neutral.
You have to click it twice.
It's really stupid,
and to get reverse,
you have to go forward twice again.
I go into neutral in this thing all the time.
It should just be one click.
It's two.
That's dumb, Volvo.
Change it.
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Let's go, though.
Driving is actually good.
(upbeat music)
In previous versions of the S90,
there was a little knob down here
that allowed you to easily change your drive modes.
Now Volvo got rid of it,
and instead it's now in the infotainment,
so if I wanna go to power,
we go up like that,
Volvo says it's because no one used their drive modes.
They look at the data.
No one's using it.
But, Volvo, why do you think
people are not using your drive modes?
Is it because people don't use them
or because your drive modes suck (beep)?
I think it's the latter,
because even though this has four corner active suspension,
I can't tell the difference between
power and hybrid and all the different modes.
Like, even in my Golf GTI going from sport to comfort,
you can really just feel the whole thing
go from like tight and wanting to go,
to just kind of relaxed and sort of glides over bumps.
In this you have the suspension.
I mean, it is well set up,
but I just really wish that they allowed you
a little bit more range of the suspension
and then the chassis and everything
instead of just here's what you get.
Anyway, do you want to do a little launchy launch, Brandon?
- [Brandon] Yeah, sure.
- I haven't done a launch in this yet.
It's not the kind of car where you..
Ooh hoo hoo, wow.
It launches pretty hard, damn.
There was some wheel spin there.
0-60 in 4.9 seconds
and I think there was some wheel hop in the front.
We definitely spun the rears.
Damn, that was enjoyable.
Did you like that, Brandon?
- [Brandon] Uh, yes.
- He did, great.
So, yeah, this thing is proper fast.
Like you put your foot down and-
(engine revs)
It just charges.
It doesn't do it,
except for back there when I brake boosted it.
It's always very refined.
Like, you put your foot down
and I don't think they're giving you
the full electric all at once.
I think they're just smoothing everything out
so that you don't have that like,
if you've ever been in a Tesla
with someone that's a bad driver and one pedal mode.
It's an awful time.
Speaking of which, though.
This is, as far as I know,
the only plug in hybrid
that has proper one pedal driving.
You give a little pull back on the shifter
and you can go between drive and braking.
It's just fricking awesome.
I absolutely love one pedal driving
and allows you to kind of get
the feel of a manual transmission car in an automatic.
There's something about the engine braking
that I just love.
It makes the whole experience better.
It allows you to kind of trim your lines
as you're dipping into and out of corners.
I absolutely love it
and as a bonus you get more energy recovery from the braking
so your battery lasts longer.
Awesome.
Up front, the center display is just awesome.
It is very similar to the one that we found
in like the Ioniq 5 and the KIA EV6,
but it's just so much better executed.
So, through the steering wheel,
I can clearly see everything that's up there
and in the center you only have two options.
Either nothing or Google Maps.
I just keep Google Maps on there all the time.
It is just great to be able to look here,
have your directions,
and your passenger can screw around
with the infotainment
and you don't have to worry about missing a stop.
Here's a speed bump.
How is it going to handle this?
Let's just hit it.
Okay, that was actually fine.
Larger bumps, it filters out no problem.
At low speeds it can be a little bit crashy.
It's nothing like an electric car,
or most electric cars,
but there's a little bit more harshness
than I would expect in a big, executive saloon.
I understand why they did it, though.
Once you get on the highway and up to about 100 kph,
the suspension in this thing is just sublime.
Okay, we found some corners, here we go.
If you really want to,
it can be quite rapid.
Like you can dip it into a corner here.
It is quite fast.
Like, almost shockingly so,
given the size of the thing,
but when you really push it like right there,
you can feel the whole thing just being like,
Why?
Why are you doing this?
You could be driving smoothly right now,
and you should drive smoothly,
and then you kinda just do.
It's honestly like a better B row cruiser
than a lot of sports cars that I've been in,
because in those the whole time
I'm just thinking 'wow, this would be really great
if I could go 200 kph right now.'
Instead in this, it's like 'hmm, I'm happy going 120.'
What else do we have here, Brandon?
Oh, assists!
So, the steering assist in this is quite good.
The problem is that I never use it,
since to activate it,
you have to go into driving,
scroll down here,
and then enable steering assist.
If they just had a button on the steering wheel,
I would use it all the time.
Cause it does work pretty well,
but at the same time if I have to go into the menus,
yeah I don't do it.
The adaptive cruise control also is pretty good.
It's excellent up until,
I don't know,
you get down to about 20/30 kph
and then it can be a little bit jerky.
If you're following Alexis with like,
a proper adaptive cruise it's going to be nice and smooth,
but if you're behind someone that
has an N on the back of their car,
it's not going to be so good of a time.
Overall, driving this has just been fantastic.
Like, ever since I got it,
I've loved it.
Everyone else that has gotten in it
has just loved the car.
I'm really surprised.
Just, everything feels really well thought through
when so many other vehicles feel like
they're just slapping all the tech in
for the sake of it being tech and fancy.
In Canada, this starts around 70 grand
and as specced it comes in at 90.
There's a lot of other cars
that are available at $90,000.
Uh, I don't know.
I don't drive saloons all the time, Brandon.
Do we even give good consumer advice on that?
You probably live in a different country anyway.
It doesn't even matter.
Anyway, the sound system in this thing
is fricking amazing,
so I'm going to get back to listening to it.
Have a great day.
See you later.
Volvo, if you want to give someone a V90
for a long term review, I know someone.
See ya.