Volvo Cars has started building its all-electric EX90 sport utility vehicle at its plant in Ridgeville, months later than first planned.

The company announced the milestone Wednesday. The first customer-bound EX90 off the line was painted Denim Blue and is headed to a buyer in the United States later this year, Volvo said. The first customer deliveries are scheduled for the second half of 2024.

The seven-seat EX90 is the first all-electric model built at the $1.2 billion Berkeley County plant, The Post and Courier reported. Volvo calls it its new electric flagship SUV and says it is the first Volvo car powered by core computing technology.

In a company statement, Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan called the EX90 the start of “a new era for safety, sustainability and human-centric technology.”

“The EX90 is proudly manufactured in the USA and reflects our long-term commitment to our people in South Carolina and the broader US market,” Rowan said.

A delayed launch

Volvo unveiled the EX90 in Stockholm on Nov. 9, 2022, and said then that production would begin in Ridgeville in 2023, The Post and Courier reported. The SUV is the battery-powered successor to the gas-powered XC90.

Production plans slipped last year. Volvo said in a statement to InsideEVs that the adjusted timeline it communicated May 11, 2023, was “connected to additional time needed for software development” and was not related to the vehicle’s lidar sensor. Rowan said last year that the delay would be five or six months and blamed “the complexity of the software code,” InsideEVs and Electrek reported, citing Automotive News.

“We’re writing a lot of [the] software ourselves. We wanted to make sure that the first time we put lidar into our safety stack … it operates in the way it should,” Rowan said, according to InsideEVs.

The EX90 comes with a long list of sensors. The Post and Courier has reported that it carries a roof-mounted lidar system designed by Luminar, along with radar, cameras and ultrasonic sensors, and interior cameras that can watch for driver fatigue.

The car

The EX90 has a range of up to 300 miles on a single charge and a list price starting at $77,990, including destination charges, The Post and Courier reported. Volvo says it can be improved over time through software updates.

It is also Volvo’s first car with a battery “passport,” a supply chain tracker that identifies where key raw materials in its batteries come from and discloses the carbon footprint of each battery pack, according to the newspaper.

An EX90 for the Chinese market will be built in China, The Post and Courier reported.

Changes at the plant

Volvo said it has made extensive investments in the Ridgeville plant in recent years. The body shop and paint shop have been renewed and expanded significantly, and the plant now has a battery pack production line, the company said.

“With these investments, our US production facility is well-prepared for this new era in its still young history and reflects our long-term commitment to South Carolina and the United States,” Volvo said.

The plant, Volvo’s only U.S. factory, opened in 2018 and also builds the S60 sedan, the company said. It can build up to 150,000 cars a year. Later this year, it is scheduled to begin building the Polestar 3 SUV for Volvo’s sister brand, according to The Post and Courier.

The site employs more than 2,000 workers and expects to nearly double its payroll to 3,910 by 2028, the newspaper reported.

Volvo’s electric plans

Volvo plans for electric vehicles to make up half of its sales by 2025 and has vowed to produce only battery-powered cars by 2030, The Post and Courier reported.

The company reported U.S. sales of 51,708 vehicles through May, up 10.4% from a year earlier, according to the newspaper.

Volvo Car Group recorded a record core operating profit of 25.6 billion Swedish kronor in 2023 on record global sales of 708,716 cars, the company said. Volvo is majority owned by China’s Geely Holding Group, The Post and Courier reported.