- Volvo is upgrading the central computer on all 2025 EX90s for free.
- The company has spent over a year trying to squash software bugs in the EX90, but owners are still reporting serious issues and glitches.
- One owner told InsideEVs that her EX90 has been a “dumpster fire inside a train wreck.”
On Monday morning, I spoke to a Volvo EX90 owner who reported a litany of issues with her 2025 EX90: malfunctioning phone-as-a-key functionality, a useless keyfob, a keycard that rarely worked quickly, constant phone connection issues, infotainment glitches and error messages. I was surprised not because I hadn’t heard of these kinds of problems, but because I experienced them myself over a year ago at the EX90 first drive again. At the time, Volvo said software fixes were imminent.
Today, we know the issues go deeper. To solve them, Volvo announced on Tuesday that it will replace the central computer of every 2025 EX90 with the new one from the 2026 EX90. It’s a tacit admission that the company can’t solve the EX90’s issues while simultaneously launching its next-generation software-defined vehicles, and that it’s easier to replace the original computer than to build bug-free software for it. But for some, the damage to the Volvo brand has already been done.
The Volvo EX90 has had plenty of software issues, but a new computer should help remedy some of the core problems.
Photo by: Volvo
“I say without exaggeration that this car is a dumpster fire inside a train wreck,” InsideEVs reader and EX90 owner Sally Greer told me via email. Greer tipped me off that Volvo would be replacing the computer in her 2025 EX90, and the company later confirmed that the replacement unit is coming to all EX90s. The new computer is a Nvidia Drive AGX Orin-based core computer with over 500 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) of power, which Volvo says will help power its autonomous driving ambitions.
The EX90 already had a LIDAR sensor and a broad camera array, though the former sensor is not currently used in any driver-assistance logic. The hope is to eventually enable autonomous driving with LIDAR, radar and cameras working together. But hopes of quick progress toward that goal were partially dashed by the number of software issues in the initial EX90, forcing Volvo to allocate more resources toward fixing existing software issues, not just focusing on future improvements.
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Source: InsideEVs
That was a key selling point for the EX90, which has been marketed as the first European software-defined vehicle (SDV) on sale in the U.S., perhaps along with its close mechanical relative, the Polestar 3. (While that car has seen similar issues, according to owner reports, they appear to be less widespread, and Polestar has not announced any computer system replacements.)
SDVs offer plenty of advantages over traditionally designed cars, including better software feature integration, lower production costs and theoretically endless upgradeability. Yet all of these benefits come alongside one major risk: If you can’t build world-class hardware and software to power the system, your customers are going to have a bad time.
Take it from Greer. The 64-year-old Minnesotan bought her EX90 after owning a 2021 XC90 for four years and loving it. She says that after experiencing so many issues with phone connectivity and Google Assistant support, she started keeping track of how often it failed.
“So of the 95 drives I’ve had since August 27, my phone and Google Assistant have worked 22 times. So I can’t be in touch with the outside world,” Greer told me over the phone. CarPlay, she said, “just doesn’t work.” Whether wireless or wired, it’s successfully connected about 10 times since she got the car, she estimates.
Even unlocking and starting the car is an issue.
“The phone as a key does not work. It’s not reliable and I gave up using it,” she said, which is in line with my experience on the first drive. “I do have a [key] fob, and that hasn’t worked since day one. So I depend on the key card entirely.”
But if it’s raining, Greer says she often has to hold the card up to the door sensor for 60-90 seconds. Usually, she says, it’s more like 40 seconds. She also described a harrowing situation where the EX90 limited its power output as she was merging onto the highway, with the vehicle refusing to accelerate past 40 mph with the throttle pinned.
After hearing about Greer’s ordeal and plenty of other similar experiences online, I’m not surprised to hear Volvo is just ditching its first-generation SDV computer entirely. The company has had over a year to fix these issues and, if a software fix were easy, it would have been done. Having already botched its first attempt at an electric flagship, and with tariff concerns shaking the business’s fundamentals, the brand now has to hit a home run with the upcoming EX60 if it wants to regain its electric mojo.
Upgrading existing EX90 computers to the 2026 model’s Nvidia unit—which I expect to see in future Volvos—means that the company can focus on perfecting software for that unit, rather than having to keep updating units with flawed hardware.
But the question is whether doing so will win back the trust of buyers who have been scorned by their EX90 issues. Greer, for one, has attempted to get a manufacturer buyback to no avail, though I have heard plenty of stories of EX90 buybacks. Given Volvo’s reputation as a safe and reliable automaker, I have to imagine its owners felt particularly surprised by the number of issues with the EX90. For Greer, the constant issues and the dismissive attitude of her local service center have turned her off the car for good.
“One of the service reps told me, ‘When you bought this car, you knew it was new, and you need to be patient with it,'” Greer said. “And I asked him, gosh, we paid just under $90,000 for the car. Is Volvo going to be patient with my lease payments? He didn’t have an answer to that.”
A new computer may not bring Greer back into a Volvo showroom anytime soon. But it’s a first step in the right direction for the EX90, and should at least prevent too many more buyers from feeling scorned. It’s also delivering through on Volvo’s promise to keep EX90s up-to-date, a spokesperson told InsideEVs via email.
“Regarding the computer upgrade, Volvo Cars strives to improve our platforms and products as soon as it is technically possible–in line with our promise to continuously improve our cars,” Volvo spokesperson Sophia Durr Aurori said via email. “Our ambition is that, as soon as we have improvements to offer our customers, we want them to benefit from them. “
Aurori says that Volvo will share further details on the computer upgrade shortly. But if you’re an owner of an affected EX90, you should already have an email about it in your inbox. The one-time upgrade will be available for free from your local Volvo dealer.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@Ev Authority.com
