Volvo with a radical fix for its flagship EV: free brain transplant for the EX90

When you buy a premium electric SUV from a brand like Volvo, you expect quality engineering and reliability. For owners of the Volvo EX90, the reality has been nothing but, with the Swedish flagship EV becoming a constant source of frustration.

Reported problems ranged from keys that wouldn't work - whether it was the phone-as-a-key, the keyfob, or the keycard - to a buggy infotainment system and constant error messages. For a vehicle marketed as the future, it felt decidedly unfinished. After initially promising that simple software fixes were on the way, Volvo is now taking a much more drastic and unusual step.

The Swedish automaker has announced it will replace the central computer in every single 2025 Volvo EX90, free of charge. This is a full hardware upgrade to the more powerful system destined for the 2026 model, and a quiet admission that the problems with its high-tech EV run deeper than software.

It suggests the original computer hardware simply wasn't up to the job of delivering the smooth experience customers expected, and that it's easier for the company to swap the unit rather than to continue patching a faulty system.

The Volvo EX90 was promoted as a "software-defined vehicle," or SDV. In simple terms, this means the car is designed to be more like a smartphone on wheels, with its features and functions controlled by a powerful central computer.

The EX90 even came equipped with futuristic hardware, like a roof-mounted LIDAR sensor, to support advanced self-driving capabilities. The problem was that at launch, much of this technology wasn't even turned on.

The LIDAR was just for show, and many of the promised driver-assistance features were missing, a clear sign of the vehicle's rushed development. The EX90 became a prime example of the biggest risk of SDVs: when the core software and hardware aren't perfect, the entire car suffers.

To fix this, Volvo is giving the 2025 EX90 a brain boost. The original computer, which used a combination of a single Nvidia Orin chip and a less powerful Nvidia Xavier chip, is being completely removed. In its place, dealers will install the dual Nvidia DRIVE AGX Orin setup from the 2026 model with processing power of over 500 TOPS.

This upgrade promises to not only fix the existing glitches but also improve overall performance, reduce battery drain when the vehicle is parked, and finally enable the advanced safety and parking-assist features that were missing from the start.

Typically, such widespread hardware replacements are only mandated by official safety recalls. In this case, Volvo is acting preemptively to fix a quality and performance issue, even as the company faces financial trouble, having recently reported a big quarterly loss.

The decision is likely a strategic one. With fewer than 4,000 EX90 EVs on the road in the United States, the cost of the program is manageable. By standardizing the computer hardware across all EX90s, Volvo can focus its software development team on perfecting a single, powerful platform rather than splitting its resources trying to support two different systems.

For current 2025 EX90 owners, the process will start with a notification from their local dealer to schedule the upgrade. Volvo says the hardware replacement is not mandatory, but there's a major catch. Owners who choose not to get the new computer "will not be able to receive future software updates and new features."

This effectively means their multi-thousand-dollar, cutting-edge EV will be frozen in time, unable to receive the very improvements that were a key selling point. The "choice" seems less like an option and more like a strong recommendation to ensure the car functions as it was promised in the first place.

With the EX60 on the horizon, Volvo is under a lot of pressure to deliver a flawless launch, and this expensive lesson shows just how difficult it is to build the complex electric cars of the future, and how important it is to get the basics right.

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