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Model Year 2026 versions of the Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3 electric SUV twins add a new processor with more computing power – and existing customers won’t miss out.
The 2026 Volvo EX90 and 2026 Polestar 3 electric SUVs have received a new supercomputer chip with more processing power, with the upgrade to become available for thousands of existing vehicles at no extra cost.
Volvo and Polestar – which jointly developed the Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3 twins – have announced 2026 versions of their flagship SUVs have received the more powerful Nvidia Drive AGX Orin processor.
It is also coming to the 2026 Volvo ES90 electric sedan which has been confirmed to debut on Wednesday March 5, 2025.
Thousands of existing Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3 models – which feature the Nvidia Drive AGX Xavier chip first announced more than five years ago – will get a "complimentary hardware upgrade" globally to receive the new processor, the brands have confirmed.
The Volvo electric cars appear to go one step ahead of the Polestar 3 with two AGX Orin chips to support their active safety features – which utilise a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanner in the EX90 and ES90, plus cameras and radars – other vehicle sensors, and high-voltage battery management.
Volvo claims the dual configuration will deliver around 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS), with an "eightfold improvement" in artificial intelligence computing performance over the chip fitted to current EX90 models.
The Chinese-owned Swedish brand said it expects to increase its deep learning model and neural network from 40 million to 200 million parameters "over time".
This will support its planned hands-free autonomous highway driving system for the EX90 and ES90, with the increased parameters to be enabled for customers once it collects more data and further develops its systems.
Polestar said it will contact existing Polestar 3 owners to organise the fitment of the new processor at their closest service centre once the upgrade becomes available.
Volvo notes "existing customers of the EX90 will get an upgrade of their cars free of charge".
American chip manufacturer Nvidia unveiled its AGX Orin vehicle processor in December 2019 with a 2022 vehicle launch target, supporting autonomous driving ranging from Level 2 (lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control) to Level 5 (full automation with no driver assistance required).
It is claimed to be seven times faster than the Xavier system-on-a-chip (SoC) found in earlier versions of the Volvo and Polestar, which both debuted in late 2022 but were delayed globally after software-related roadblocks.
The Nvidia Drive AGX Thor chip was announced in late 2022 to succeed the ‘Orin’ with a 2025 launch target, offering up to 1000 TOPS from a single chip – four times more than its predecessor.
The 2026 Lynk & Co 900 plug-in hybrid SUV – from the same Geely parent as Volvo and Polestar – is the first vehicle globally to use the newest ‘Thor’ SoC, which Volvo confirmed in 2024 it will also offer "later this decade".
Volvo delivered around 1800 EX90s globally in 2024 compared to 108,600 XC90s, with production of the EX90 in China and the United States set to ramp up this year.
Global delivery figures for the Polestar 3 have not been announced, but the entire brand sold 44,851 vehicles worldwide in 2024, a 15 per cent decline from 2023.
Jordan is a motoring journalist based in Melbourne with a lifelong passion for cars. He has been surrounded by classic Fords and Holdens, brand-new cars, and everything in between from birth, with his parents’ owning an automotive workshop in regional Victoria. Jordan started writing about cars in 2021, and joined the Drive team in 2024.
