Volvo unveils bespoke EX90 electric SUV as ‘the safest vehicle it has ever produced’
During a global livestream event from Sweden today, Volvo Cars has officially unveiled its upcoming EX90 SUV, sharing a myriad of safety features, advanced technologies, and sustainable materials that combine within this bespoke EV. Volvo also teased a second model coming next year, but more on that later. There’s lots to explore here, so let’s dig in.
Table of contents
Background of the Volvo EX90
We first started covering the Volvo EX90 when the automaker began teasing it in September, touting the upcoming SUV’s capabilities as “an invisible shield of safety.” As a successor to the super popular XC90, Volvo has explained that this new bespoke SUV kicks off a new generation of vehicles for the brand as it looks to become offer an entirely-electric lineup by 2030 and become entirely carbon neutral a decade after that.
Volvo promised the EX90 would come standard with a slew of safety features and in-house designed technologies, in addition to other components from trusted companies like Google and NVIDIA. What first enticed us to learn more about the EX90 is its LiDAR sensors built into its exterior, again standard instead of as an upsell to potential customers.
In early October, we learned that the EX90 will arrive as Volvo’s first vehicle with bi-directional charging capabilities, part of a holistic energy management system the company will soon offer to help consumers utilize their vehicle to alleviate grid dependency and ensure backup power during emergencies.
Following an official unveiling today, we’ve learned a helluva lot more about the EX90 SUV. As a representation of Volvo’s targeted future, this is a wonderful starter. Have a look.
EX90 demonstrates the Volvo’s future as electric brand
There are plenty in minute details in both press releases from Volvo, but we recommend watching the video unveiling below to get the full picture, because there is A LOT of new stuff being introduced by by the automaker within this electric SUV.
Unlike Volvo’s previous EVs that were essentially combustion models converted for the electric age, the EX90 will arrive as an entirely new breed of EV for the brand – software defined, sustainable, and safe for a family lifestyle. It sits atop an entirely bespoke platform, complete with new electric motors, inverters, and a battery management system.
Company CEO Jim Rowan explained that the EX90 demonstrates the future Volvo will stand for as it relates to safety, technology, sustainability, and design. Speaking of design, let’s start with that exterior.
Aside from more of a sleeker, streamlined look compared to previous models, the EX90 has two key features worth pointing out. First is its Luminar LiDAR system, implemented front and center in the roof line above the windshield (image above). The system is able to see 250 meters ahead in complete darkness. The LiDAR is also supported by 16 ultrasonic sensors, 8 cameras, and 5 radar systems – all standard.
Second is the redesigned headlamps that deliver a new spin on Volvo’s unmistakable “Thor’s hammer” design. Have a look.
By removing the front grill because, well, its obsolete, Volvo wanted to ensure the face of its future models was still recognizable, hence where the new headlamps come in. These high-definition 1.3 megapixel lights open from the hammer shape for daylight driving, to the stronger night lamps.
The Volvo team said it also offers an anthropomorphism to the face of the EX90, as sort of a blinking or eye opening motion. There are also come cool new light features in the interior, so let’s move inward.
Glowing wood interior and more safety features
Inside the cabin, future EX90 owners will find evidence Volvo’s aforementioned focus on safety, sustainability, and design. Materials in the carpets, seats, and headliners come from recycled materials, while still offering a look of quality. During the day, the dash panels and doors house Scandinavian wood, but as the sun sets, light emerges from within – an entirely new Volvo design feature debuting on the EX90.
The EX90’s dash houses a 14.5-inch center screen with Google and 5G connectivity built-in, alongside capabilities for wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and over-the-air updates. The SUV will also arrive as the first Volvo to feature Dolby Atmos sound via a 25 speaker system from Bowers and Wilkins.
The driver’s side features its own smaller display above the steering wheel, as well as two cameras that combine with “unique Volvo technology software and algorithms” to monitor the driver’s state of being. This includes drowsiness, distraction, intoxication, and illness. Per the release:
It’ll alert you, first softly nudging, then more insistent. And if the unthinkable happens, and you fall asleep or are taken ill while driving, the Volvo EX90 is designed to safely stop and call for help.
Other specs and teaser of a new model in 2023?
Today’s unveiling was more focused on the design elements of the Volvo EX90, so we are sure to learn more about its performance (and pricing) closer to production. That said, here are some other pertinent specs to share:
- Up to 600 km (~373 mi) range on a single charge (WLTP standards)
- Can charge from 10-80% in under 30 minutes
- Dual motor version will be powered by an 111 kWh battery to start
- 517 horsepower (380 kW) and 910 Nm of torque
- Bi-directional charging capabilities including Plug & Charge
Last but not least, Volvo capped off the EX90 presentation with a little teaser of things to come. A video showed the EX90 sitting by its lonesome when the lights start to flicker. Suddenly, a second, smaller model appears on left as the screen behind flashes “2023.” Check it.
Volvo is certainly kicking off a new generation of all-electric vehicle with the EX90, and appears to be soon following up with a more compact sibling very soon. We will keep tabs on that and ensure you’re informed as well. In the meantime, we recommend checking out the full Volvo EX90 unveiling below.
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China set a new record for clean tech exports in August 2025, hitting $20 billion, according to new data analyzed using Ember’s China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer. The country remains the world’s largest exporter of electrotech, with surging demand for EVs and batteries leading the charge.
EV exports jumped 26% from January through August compared to the same period in 2024, while battery exports rose 23%. Other sectors saw more modest growth – grid technology up 22%, wind up 16%, and heating and cooling systems up 4% – but those gains were offset by a 19% drop in solar PV export value. EVs and batteries are now worth more than double the value of China’s solar PV exports.
This milestone is remarkable because it comes even as technology prices have fallen sharply. Solar panel prices, for example, have plunged more than 80% over the past decade, making them more affordable and driving up global demand. In August alone, China exported 46 gigawatts (GW) of solar PV – more than Australia’s entire installed solar capacity – setting a record in capacity terms. However, their dollar value remains 47% below their March 2023 peak.
Falling prices have fueled growth in new regions. Over half of the increase in China’s EV exports this year came from outside the OECD, with the ASEAN region emerging as a major growth engine. EV exports to ASEAN surged 75% in the first eight months of 2025, mainly driven by Indonesia. The country saw the biggest rise in Chinese EV imports globally this year, becoming the world’s ninth-largest EV market. Battery electric vehicles made up 14% of new car sales in Indonesia in August 2025, up from 9% a year earlier.
Africa is also rapidly adopting Chinese clean tech. From January to August, EV exports to the continent nearly tripled year-over-year (+287%), albeit from a very low base, with Morocco leading growth and Nigeria’s imports soaring sixfold. Latin America and the Caribbean saw an 11% rise, while the Middle East climbed 72%.
Domestically, China’s own adoption of clean tech is accelerating even faster. EVs accounted for 52% of new car sales in August, and in the first half of 2025, China installed more than twice as many solar panels as the rest of the world combined. Ember’s recent China Energy Transition Review attributes this momentum to consistent policy support that’s reshaping the country’s economy and energy system around electrified technologies.
“Demand for clean technologies continues to skyrocket as more and more countries seek their benefits, from low-cost power to cheaper vehicles,” said Ember analyst Euan Graham. “China’s electrotech is becoming the basis of the new energy system, with continued cost reductions driving faster growth than ever, especially in emerging economies.”
Read more: The era of cheap Chinese solar + storage is ending – here’s why
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Environment
This Meta alum has spent 10 months leading OpenAI’s nationwide hunt for its Stargate data centers
Keith Heyde stands on site in Abilene, Texas, where OpenAI’s Stargate infrastructure buildout is underway. Heyde, a former head of AI compute at Meta, is now leading OpenAI’s physical expansion push.
OpenAI
It wasn’t how Keith Heyde envisioned celebrating the holidays. Rather than hanging out with his wife back home in Oregon, Heyde spent late December visiting potential data center sites across the U.S.
Two months earlier, Heyde left Meta to join OpenAI as the head of infrastructure. His job was to turn CEO Sam Altman’s ambitious compute dreams into reality, seeking out vast swaths of land suitable for expansive facilities that will eventually be packed with powerful graphics processing units for building large language models.
“My in-between Christmas and New Year’s last year was actually mostly spent looking at sites,” Heyde, 36, told CNBC in an interview. “So my family loved that, trust me.”
His life in 2025 has only gotten more intense.
Since January, OpenAI has been quietly soliciting and reviewing proposals from around 800 applicants hoping to host the next wave of its Stargate data centers, AI supercomputing hubs designed to train increasingly powerful models.
Roughly 20 sites are now in advanced stages of diligence, with massive tracts of land under review across the Southwest, Midwest and Southeast. Heyde said tax incentives are “a relatively small part of the decision matrix.”
The most important factors are access to power, ability to scale, and buy-in from local communities.
“Can we build quickly, is the power ramp there fast, and is this something where it makes sense from a community perspective?” he said.
Heyde leads site development within OpenAI’s industrial compute team, a division that’s swiftly become one of the most important groups inside the company. Infrastructure, once a supporting function, has now been elevated to a strategic pillar on par with product and model development.
With traditional data centers nearly at max capacity, OpenAI is betting that owning the next generation of physical infrastructure is central to controlling the future of AI.
The energy needs are hard to fathom. A gigawatt data center requires the amount of power needed for some entire cities. Late last month, OpenAI announced plans for a 17-gigawatt buildout in partnership with Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank.
New sites will have to include all sorts of energy options, including battery-backed solar installations, legacy gas turbine refurbishments and even small modular nuclear reactors, Heyde said. Each site looks different, but together they form the industrial backbone OpenAI needs to scale.
“We’ve done this wonderful piece of bottleneck analysis to see what types of energy sources actually allow us to unlock the journey that we want to be on,” Heyde said.
A good chunk of the capital is coming from Nvidia. The chipmaker agreed to invest up to $100 billion to fuel OpenAI’s expansion, which will involve purchasing millions of Nvidia’s GPUs.
‘Perfect wasn’t the goal’
Heyde, a former head of AI compute at Meta, helped oversee the buildout of Meta’s first 100,000 GPU cluster.
In addition to power, OpenAI is assessing how quickly it can build on a site, the availability of labor and proximity to supportive local governments, according to Stargate’s request for proposal.
Heyde said the team has made around 100 site visits and has a short list of sites in late-stage review. Some will be brand new builds, and others will require conversions and refurbishments of existing facilities. Flexibility will be key.
“The perfect parcels are largely taken,” Heyde said. “But we knew that perfect wasn’t the goal — the goal for us was, number one, a compelling power ramp.”
Competition is fierce.
Meta is building what may be the largest data center in the Western Hemisphere — a $10 billion project in Northeast Louisiana, fueled by billions in state incentives. CEO Mark Zuckerberg raised the top end of the company’s annual capital expenditure spending range to $72 billion in July.
The steel frame of data centers under construction during a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.
Shelby Tauber | Reuters
Amazon and Anthropic are teaming up on a 1,200-acre AI campus in Indiana. And across the country, states are rolling out tax breaks, power guarantees, and expedited zoning approvals to attract the next big AI cluster.
OpenAI is a relative upstart, having been around for just a decade and only known to the mainstream since launching ChatGPT less than three years ago. But it’s raised mounds of cash from the likes of Microsoft and SoftBank, in addition to Nvidia, on its way to a $500 billion valuation.
And OpenAI is showing it’s not afraid to lead the way in AI. A self-built solar campus in Abiliene, Texas, is already live.
While OpenAI still leans on partners like Oracle, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC last week in Abilene that owning first-party infrastructure provides a differentiated approach. It curbs vendor markups, safeguards key intellectual property, and follows the same strategic logic that once drove Amazon to build Amazon Web Services rather than rely on existing infrastructure.
However, Heyde indicated that there’s no real playbook when it comes to AI, particularly as companies pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that can potentially meet or exceed human capabilities.
“It’s a very different order of magnitude when we think about the type of delivery that has to happen at those locations,” he said.
Some applicants, including former bitcoin mining operators, offered existing power infrastructure, like substations and modular buildouts, but Heyde said those don’t always fit.
“Sometimes we found that it’s almost nice to be the first interaction in a community,” he said. “It’s a very nice narrative that we’re bringing the data center and the infrastructure there on behalf of OpenAI.”
The 20 finalist sites represent phase one of a much larger buildout. OpenAI ultimately plans to scale from single-gigawatt projects to massive campuses.
“Any place or any site we’re moving forward with, we’ve really considered the viability and our own belief that we can deliver the power story and the infrastructure story associated with those sites,” Heyde said.
He understands why many people are skeptical.
“It’s hard. There’s no doubt about it,” Heyde said. “The numbers we’re talking about are very challenging, but it’s certainly possible.”
WATCH: OpenAI’s $850 billion buildout contends with grid limits
There’s a quiet revolution underway in Cadillac showrooms across America. The brand’s renewed “Standard of the World” ambitions are now matched by sleek, statement-making electric vehicles. And, thanks to a little help from Federal tax credit FOMO, more than 40% of new Cadillacs sold in Q3 were 100% electric.
GM’s overall EV sales numbers were up 110% last quarter, climbing to 66,501 units in the US alone on the back of the affordable, 300+ mile Chevy Equinox and 1,000-mile capable (sort of) Silverado EV – but it was Cadillac dealers that saw the biggest growth in EV sales.
As buyers poured into Cadillac dealerships in the last days of the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit, GM’s luxury arm was ready with stylish, new-for-2025 electric vehicles like the Optiq, Vistiq, and Escalade IQ* waiting for them alongside the Lyriq. The result wasn’t just Cadillac’s best third quarter in more than a decade – Cadillac (and GM) is having one of its best sales year, period.
Here’s what the quarter looked like, by the recently-released GM sales numbers.
| EV MODEL | Q3 25/Q3 24 | Q3 25 | Q3 24 | YTD 25/YTD 24 | YTD 25 | YTD 24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chevrolet Equinox EV | +156.70% | 25,085 | 9,772 | +389.88% | 52,834 | 10,785 |
| Chevrolet Blazer EV | +1.14% | 8,089 | 7,998 | +36.72% | 20,825 | 15,232 |
| Chevrolet Silverado EV | +97.49% | 3,940 | 1,995 | +78.58% | 9,379 | 5,252 |
| Chevrolet BrightDrop | * | 2,384 | * | * | 3,976 | 0 |
| GMC Hummer EV Pickup | +21.86% | 5,246 | 4,305 | +48.65% | 13,233 | 8,902 |
| GMC Sierra EV | +771.84% | 3,374 | 387 | +1,488.37% | 6,147 | 387 |
| Cadillac Optiq | * | 4,886 | * | * | 9,826 | 0 |
| Cadillac Lyriq | +1.18% | 7,309 | 7,224 | -18.17% | 16,626 | 20,318 |
| Cadillac Vistiq | * | 3,924 | * | * | 5,669 | 0 |
| Cadillac Escalade IQ | * | 2,264 | * | * | 6,030 | 0 |
| Total | +109.91% | 66,501 | 31,681 | +137.44% | 144,545 | 60,876 |
Source: GM Authority / GM Q3 2025 sales report.
That asterisk up there next to the high-rolling Escalade IQ that sold more than 3,900 examples is because, at well over $80,000 even for the most basic model it never qualified for the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit to begin with (nor did the people destined to buy it, who almost certainly make too much to qualify).
It’ll be interesting to see if the loss of that tax credit will do much to negatively impact EV sales in Q4. And that’ll get doubly interesting thanks to the creative accounting team at GM that figured out how to extend that $7,500 tax credit for existing dealer inventory (for a few more months) and that its biggest EV rivals at Hyundai are slashing prices on popular IONIQ models.
You can check out our EIC Fred Lambert’s full review of the new electric Cadillac Escalade in the video, below, and use the following links to find great Cadillac deals near you while that cleverly extended tax credit is still a thing.
Cadillac Escalade IQ review
SOURCE | IMAGES: GM, via GM Authority.
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