Volvo was one of the early adopters of CarPlay, making its U.S. debut with the 2016 XC90, and leading the way in showing Apple Maps on a secondary screen in the driver’s instrument display, but the company has been surprisingly slow to expand beyond wired connectivity and support wireless CarPlay.
That’s changing with some of Volvo’s new electric models, with the EX30 and EX90 supporting it in the US and the ES90 supporting it in China and select European markets. The EX30 and EX90 support digital car keys that integrate with Apple’s Wallet app, and I recently had the chance to spend some time with the 2025 EX90 to test Volvo’s implementation of these features.
When it comes to wireless CarPlay, it largely performs as you’d expect since the technology has been around for several years now and is available in many models across dozens of brands. But Volvo offers some nice features, including the dual-screen Apple Maps experience it’s offered for years in wired mode and which is a fairly rare offering among manufacturers.
The EX90 has a large 14.5-inch center display in portrait orientation, plus a 9-inch digital driver display, and my high-end trim was also equipped with a head-up display, which offers plenty of screen space to show an array of information at a glance.
With that large portrait display in the middle of the dashboard, CarPlay– is able to occupy most of it for a comprehensive user experience, starting with the ability to display up to 20 apps on the CarPlay– home screen in four rows of five icons. And when you tap on individual apps, you’ll see bold, large interfaces that make content easy to see and controls easy to interact with. Navigation apps like Apple Maps are capable of displaying large map views that provide plenty of context for your surroundings, while the Now Playing app can display large artwork for music and podcast content.
The 9-inch driver display certainly isn’t huge, and it stands out as its own compact element, a design that’s common in recent EVs where simplicity has become the main theme. But as noted, that driver display is still capable of serving as a handy secondary display for Apple Maps in CarPlay. When turn-by-turn navigation for Apple Maps is enabled, you’ll see roughly the same view as what you’d normally see on CarPlay’s main center screen, including a zoomed-in view of the route ahead of you, along with upcoming traffic control features like stop signs and traffic lights.
Directions for your next movement along the route are displayed on the top right, while a small text display feature below the map shows your estimated arrival time, estimated time remaining on the route, and remaining distance. Pieces of traditional driver display information like your speed and remaining battery level/range are sprinkled around the edges of the map and overlap slightly, providing a very native-looking integration.
With the driver display showing detailed near-term turn-by-turn information, the main center screen is capable of showing a zoomed-out view of your entire route, though you’ll be able to view turn-by-turn directions and other route data on that screen. If you switch the driver display view to something other than Apple Maps while a route is active, the center screen will revert to a more traditional view where it focuses on your upcoming movements instead of your route overview.
The available head-up display on the EX90 can also show turn-by-turn prompts from Apple Maps, giving you three possible places to top your routing.
Notably, Volvo has partnered closely with Google for its infotainment systems in recent years, and the EX90’s system is based on Google built-in, which means it comes with Google Maps as the default navigation app, which the driver can also take advantage of. For voice control and general queries, the platform offers access to Google Assistant, though you can easily access Siri if you’re connected using CarPlay.
Users can also access the Google Play Store to download compatible apps, and there’s also a built-in YouTube app for watching content on that big center screen when the car isn’t in motion.Apple is looking to compete in iOS 26 with new AirPlay support, though that will require a carmaker’s partnership, presumably whether or not CarPlay’s data is tapped into the car.
The EX90 and EX30 also support Volvo’s Digital Key Plus, which is configured via the Volvo app and which integrates with the Wallet app on both Apple and Android platforms. For Apple users, a digital key card for the EX90 appears in your Wallet app on iPhone and Apple Watch, and with Express Mode it lets you unlock and start the car using proximity authorization without needing to physically touch your device to a door handle or a pad inside the car and without authorizing your device.
The car can even unlock when you’re five feet or more inside it, eliminating the need to pause at all before opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat. This feature, however, can be a mixed bag if you often walk past your car in a driveway, for example, and find it unlocked when you don’t need it, so you might want to disable automatic unlocking if you find yourself in that situation.
The EX90 has a wireless phone charger and a number of USB-C charging ports scattered around the cabin. As is often the case, I’ve found the wireless phone charger’s performance to be spotty, often only able to maintain the current phone’s battery level or perhaps very slowly increase it.
Volvo has received some criticism for the stability of its latest infotainment system, with many users reporting sluggishness, connectivity issues and unresponsiveness, as well as issues with the digital keys. Fortunately, I didn’t experience any such issues during my time with the EX90, but that doesn’t discount the experiences of those who have. Volvo is working through some of the issues and is steadily releasing software updates for the system, so hopefully some of the bugs are being fixed.
The EX90 doesn’t come cheap, starting at a little over $80,000 with my test vehicle coming in at around $95,000 with all the bells and whistles and fees. The EX30 offers much of the same experience for less in a smaller car, however, with prices starting around $40,000.
