The radiator grille was traditionally a very important element in car design, writes Brian Byrne. The radiators behind them, keeping the engine from overheating, were all similar, but the grilles allowed designers to convey an ethos of the car concerned. The fronts of the cars I grew up with all immediately denoted brand and model identities.
When the electric car arrived, some stylists emphasised the elimination of the radiator by providing bland frontages. Smooth painted metal, sometimes just the brand's logo in the centre. Flat surfaces that quickly showed dirt and squashed insects. Among these, Ford's Explorer EV is a case in point. I think there's a pushback, though. Audi never went for the flat look, nor did BMW, and Mercedes-Benz is very much back in the grille identity business with the upcoming electric C-Class.
Volvo is somewhere in the middle, particularly with their big ES90 lift-back saloon. It's a car that could look very imposing if it had a grille that gave it frontal presence. There's still the diagonal bar through the main badge that has identified the brand for a long time, and the lower bumper air management design is quite strong. But the shiny part above it softens things somewhat.
Otherwise, the ES90 is a handsome car. A full five metres long, it’s big too. The semi-coupe look with the lift-back offers a sporty ethos. The light styling front and rear is distinctive, and the rear three-quarter look is a modernised echo of Volvo saloon styling since the S80 launched the brand into the space age in 1999.
Inside, it's all high-quality, verging on opulence. In my review car, it was ivory leather and toning grey trim with an elegant amount of brushed aluminium detailing. A portrait centre screen with Google's excellent operating system is large but doesn't loom over everything. Though the climate controls are also on-screen, the virtual buttons are large and on permanent display. There's a physical roller volume control underneath. The driver information screen marries simplicity with large graphics, and the overall digital operation is pleasing.
Seats for all are sumptuous and stylish. There's enough room for the rear-seat passengers to stretch out and cross their legs, in an airy ambience thanks to the full-length panoramic roof in my Ultra grade review car. That glass is electrochromic — which allows changing the transparency at the touch of a button. The liftback boot has a good capacity of 446L, adequate for the luggage of a full passenger complement on a weekend away. A small visibility observation: due to the rear window and roof angle, the centre seatback needs to be left down in the armrest position if not in use so the driver can see through to following traffic.
This is an electric-only Volvo. My version was the Single Motor with 333hp and a comfortable 0-100km/h capability of 6.6 seconds — the ultimate is the Twin Motor Performance version with 680hp and a 4.0s sprint. It's to be expected that the car performs very smoothly, but I was quite impressed with the relative silence too... wind and road noise seemed exceptionally well insulated away.
I don't write much about driver assist and safety systems these days, taking it as a given that all cars have them. Volvo has taken one step further: the ES90 comes pre-prepared with the software to operate an alcohol lock — a third-party system that is not part of the car's specification.
My time with the ES90 coincided with one of my occasional day trips to the west for family reasons, where I do a total of 400-plus kilometres there and back. The mix of roads makes it a very good test of real range in an electric car. While Volvo suggests a WLTP rating of up to 664km combined, my actual experience was something a little more than 500km, which tallies with my standard rule of thumb for most electric cars of 20 per cent less than the WLTP range claimed. Related, I charged the car from 20 to 80 per cent in half an hour at a standard 150kW charger, giving me a nominal 300km in that time.
All in all, the ES90 is a fine and quite practical car, for those who can afford a price tag that, for most of us, is as out of this world as was that famous 1999 astronaut advertisement for the S80. But there's a car for everyone in their own financial space.
PRICE: From €79,995; review car €102,595. WHAT I LIKED: The smooth, premium feel.
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