While the western world may be a little wishy-washy about electric vehicles, the rest of the world certainly isn’t, they’re taking over the roads in Europe and Asia. And, the entire planet has, at least for the time being, come to an agreement that a mid-size SUV is the ideal form factor for a vehicle, as evidenced by Volvo’s existing XC60 mid-sizer having finally dethroned the legendary 240 as Volvo’s all-time best seller. This 2027 Volvo EX60 is a huge deal for the company.
We were recently invited to a first look at the 2027 Volvo EX60 in Toronto. These are due to start arriving on our roads towards the end of the summer, and I guarantee we’ll have much more detailed coverage then. For now, I just wanna go over some neat, nerdy details that stood out to me.
It’s visually neat
“Instead of lots of cladding and complex pieces, we wanted it to look like it was sculpted from a single block of steel.”
Not only does this design decision reduce visual clutter (I am very over plastic cladding), it also improves aerodynamic efficiency, which is vital for an EV. In more pragmatic terms, it reduces cost to build, which helps save money up front, and reduces cost to repair down the line, if and when life starts happening to these.
Also, look at those fender scallops. There’s a clear visual highlight of the wheel arch, without any added trim, it’s all in the stamping, as the gods intended. Love to see it.
It’s a big die-cast model, in a way
This is the first Volvo to use “megacasting” in assembly, as has been popularized by certain other brands and is studied by others more and more. Under the skin, the entire rear end, encompassing the subframe, wheel arches, suspension mount points, and more, is all one massive die-cast aluminum piece, trimming weight (which again, is vital for energy use) and saving the cost of having to design, manufacture and join hundreds of individual components.
It is repairable
Disposable cars are not sustainable, and Volvo is keen on sustainability.
A common (and very valid) critique of using large complex castings in vehicle assembly is repairability, or the hopeless lack thereof. It does not take much of an impact to fracture one of these aluminum structures, and render an otherwise viable vehicle irreparable, often at hideous cost to the environment, as well as the insurance industry, and by extension, all of us.
With this in mind, Volvo studied many written-off vehicles built around large die-cast aluminum assemblies, looked for consistent failure points, and designed their megacasting to facilitate more repairability and keep more vehicles on the road.
Battery evolution
The EX60 uses a 95kW battery built on an 800-volt architecture, and can charge from 10-80% in as little as 18 minutes on a DC fast charger. More important than that, on a standard, 48-amp, Level 2 charger you’re likely to have (or have installed) at home, it can go all the way from 0-100% in 9 hours - which can be extrapolated to mean you’ll be able to pick up some very usable distance in the middle range in a relatively short time frame.
This battery powers two motors producing a combined 503 horsepower, and should be able to drag this slippery shape for 514 kilometers in this first most powerful, most loaded model. Upcoming models will be able to go even further.
Charging is done via a NACS port and Volvo does have access to the Supercharger network.
The battery is structural, and also full of goo
The battery casing acts as a structural part of the vehicle, making up the floor of the EX60. Not to sound like a broken record, but making a battery a stressed member of the body makes the body lighter, and simpler, which makes the vehicle more efficient and easier to build.
In the interest of safety, the battery casing is filled with a gel that encompasses the individual battery cells. This serves a dual purpose of helping to regulate the battery cell temperature (again to improve efficiency, as well as charging) and it isolates the cells in the event of impact, preventing “thermal runaway.” That’s PR-speak for fire. Battery fires are rare, but a real problem when they do happen, and this curtails that.
It is repairable, part two
Not to sound like a broken record, but a common complaint levied against structural battery designs is that they have to be sealed, and are not serviceable, which makes the vehicle perhaps somewhat disposable… you see where I’m going with this.
The thermal gel effectively seals the battery cells, and gel can be replaced. The cells can be individually serviced/replaced, which is an industry first in a cell-to-body battery design. Additionally, all of the control components of the battery, like the computer modules, inverters, coolant regulators and whatever else, are all accessible under the back seats. A minor battery fault will not make an EX60 a write-off.
The seatbelt is reinvented, by Volvo, again
Volvo rather famously invented the three-point seatbelt in 1959, and also famously, didn’t patent it. The EX60 is the first vehicle to have multi-adaptive seatbelt; in a nutshell, it’s able to sense the size and weight of the front seat occupants, and adjust exactly how the seatbelt behaves in the event of a collision.
This may not seem like much, but the aim is not only to provide greater overall accident survivability, but also eliminate seatbelt-specific injuries that have long been a necessary evil, like broken ribs.
I feel it bears mentioning here that all of Volvo’s accident safety research is readily available to anyone who wishes to see and use it, just like that un-patented seatbelt.
It’s watching you
Driver attention monitoring systems are not new, but the way Volvo is using it in the EX60 is. If it sees a collision is imminent and sees you’re paying attention, it will adjust the steering and brake responses to give you the best chance of avoiding an accident. If it sees you’re not paying attention, it will intervene for you.
Wrap it up
There’s more, but I’ll save it for when we get to spend some time with one of these and really delve into it. In the meantime. You can expect the 2027 Volvo EX60 to start landing in showrooms later this year, and prices will start at $77,500, before any dealer fees driving things up, or any rebates bringing things down.
