Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

If you own a 2025 Volvo EX90, here's some good news: You're getting a car computer upgrade. Even better news? It's free.

The Swedish automaker says that owners of model year 2025 EX90s—like the one we tested earlier this summer—are eligible for an upgrade to the electric vehicle's core computer. Specifically, the cars will get a new dual Nvidia DRIVE AGX Orin setup, which Volvo says will improve performance and reduce battery drainage, as well as enabling some features that have been TBD so far.

That will presumably be welcome news—the EX90 is a shining example of how the "minimal viable product" idea has infiltrated the auto industry from the tech sphere. That's because Volvo has had a heck of a time with the EX90 development, having to delay the EV not once but twice in order to get a handle on the car's software.

When we got our first drive in the electric SUV this time last year, that London Taxi-like hump on the roof contained a functional lidar that wasn't actually integrated into the car's advanced driver-assistance systems. In fact, a whole load of features weren't ready yet, not just ADAS features.

The EX90 was specced with a single Orin chip, together with a less-powerful Xavier chip, also from Nvidia. But that combo isn't up to the job, and for the ES90 electric sedan, the automaker went with a pair of Orins. And that's what it's going to retrofit to existing MY25 EX90s, gratis.

Volvo says that the hardware upgrade will be followed by an OTA software update that adds new assisted-driving features, new safety interventions and warnings, and assisted parking. Owners will be contacted by their dealers when the upgrade is ready, and while it's not mandatory, owners who don't take the opportunity "will not be able to receive future software updates and new features that are only available for the dual Orin configuration."

For some of you, this might seem like déjà vu. The Polestar 3, which shares a platform and a factory with the EX90 (but not a lidar sensor), has been promised the dual-Orin upgrade since early this year, and UK EX90 owners were informed of the upgrade in March. At the time, Volvo's head of software, Alwin Bakkenes, told Autocar that the hardware upgrade was a "unique" situation and was possible because of the relatively few EX90s it had delivered.

Indeed, Volvo is not having the best of times in terms of sales, reporting a quarterly loss of $1 billion (SKR10 billion) at the end of the second quarter. This makes this free upgrade even more unusual considering it's not being driven by a recall, as was the case with the Chevrolet Bolt battery upgrade. But with fewer than 4,000 EX90s on the road in the US, this should be a lot cheaper for Volvo than the Bolt battery program was for General Motors.