At the Volvo Vehicle Test Center in Northern Sweden, AutoblogGreen editor Sebastian Blanco test drives the upcoming S90 in prototype form.

Transcript

SEBASTIAN BLANCO: Hello, everyone. Welcome to yet another episode of Sebastian Drives a Car. I'm Sebastian Blanco, with Autoblog and Autoblog Green. Coming to you today from Volvo's Proving Grounds in northern Sweden. And we are in a S90 prototype. And this is the fifth of these type of prototypes that they've made, out of about 50 that Volvo will make before the car goes on sale later this year.

The S90 shares a lot of its internal parts and the chassis and architecture with the XC90, which is a very well-received Volvo SUV that came out recently. This has 70% of the same components. And so if you like that car and you want a sedan version of it, this is definitely going to be a vehicle that you'll appreciate.

Testing it on some icy roads, some snowy conditions here at the Winter Proving Grounds because that's the reason you come here, right? And what I've noticed so far is that the S90 is incredibly solid and incredibly stable.

I'm currently driving the gasoline-only model, which is called the T6. While Volvo doesn't have actual fuel economy figures, they estimate that this is going to have 26 miles per gallon. Which, admittedly, is pretty low, but this is a very heavy car, and it's very solid. It's got a lot of safety features built in. So when you start with the XC90 and even though you shrink it down, you're still dealing with a fairly heavy vehicle.

The s90 has a double-wishbone front axle suspension and an integral link rear axle suspension. Which, as I'm driving it here, we're not going over any sort of crazy terrain, but it definitely is providing a lot of stability on the ice and snow.

What Volvo is really going for with this new SPA architecture that underpins the S90, the XC90, and more cars in the future is that it's trying to take the core idea of what Volvo offers and really put that into action in vehicles that you can experience yourself. And what that means-- per the discussion this morning-- was that no matter what the conditions outside-- whether it's traffic, whether it's snow, whether it's rain-- the car should be controllable, predictable, and comfortable.

For people who want a Volvo and want that thing that Volvo's long-offered, which is a lot of safety, this is definitely a [? present ?] in their modern vehicles, as well. It's not just something that used to be there.

So that's all we've got today from the S90 prototype. Coming to you from northern Sweden, this is Sebastian Blanco for Autoblog and Autoblog Green.

[VEHICLE ENGINE]

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