Volvo EX90 Revealed As 300 Mile Electric SUV With Autonomy In Its Future

What your eye may get caught on is the EX90’s windshield bump. The SUV is the first in Volvo’s line-up to include a LiDAR sensor, fruit of the automaker’s investment in Luminar, which has been mounted up high so as to provide the best view of the road ahead for the 3D scanning array. The few rival cars out there already including LiDAR, Volvo points out, typically mount those sensors lower down such as in the grille, and in the process limit just how much of the environment the vehicle can see.

Volvo

That works with the EX90’s cameras, radar, and other sensors, to give the SUV a 360-degree perspective of the world around it. The data is fed into the NVIDIA DRIVE Xavier and Orin processors, running Volvo’s in-house software, for obstacle and accident avoidance, improvements in lane-changing assistance, and more. Pilot Assist, Volvo’s assisted highway driving system, will be able to support steering between lanes, for example.

Inside, meanwhile, those same processors tap cabin sensors and cameras to measure eye gaze concentration and flag up warnings if the driver is distracted or sleepy. Should the driver actually fall asleep, or have a medical emergency preventing them from safely controlling the EV, the EX90 should be able to automatically bring itself to a safe stop and summon assistance.