Gadgetory

i'm here at the paris motor show getting my first look at the all new volvo xc90 this is an updated version totally redesigned from top to bottom of Volvo's top SUV now as you can see behind me it's garnering a lot of attention at the show a lot of people are very interested in this car but it's kind of hard to figure out why you just look at the body it doesn't look that exciting it's a fairly standard SUV there are some cool volvo design touches like what they call the hammer of thor in the headlights their parking light configuration but there's actually two very revolutionary things about this car the first revolutionary thing I want to tell you about the volvo xc90 is this new t8 twin-engine powertrain this is actually one of five engines they'll offer for the car but this is the top one and it's pretty exciting driving the front wheels we have a 4 cylinder 2 liter engine it uses a turbocharger and a supercharger it just drives the front wheels but now we also have a hybrid system this is actually a plug-in hybrid powertrain in the center of the car we have this battery pack and it powers a 60 kilowatt electric motor that drives the rear wheels that gives the car 25 miles of pure electric range with the engine at the front wheels and the electric motor at the rear wheels we have an all wheel drive car and the drive electronics will allow a unique mix of torque depending on what the terrain is like whether it's slippery I see snow whatever you'll get the right kind of torque at each set of wheels this power combination also allows for really good fuel economy as a plug-in hybrid you could be driving under electric power for a lot of the time which will minimize your gasoline usage as you can see behind me in this open cockpit version of the xc90 that Volvo has on display here it's a three row seating car but that's actually not the revolutionary thing about the new xc90 the second revolutionary thing about the new Volvo xc90 is this new census connect touch system this is a 7-inch touchscreen in portrait style you don't really see that in many cars except the Tesla Model S and on the main screen we get four tiles we get navigation media phone and this is also showing whether these are all changeable I can slide this to the side and get a setup screen or I can slide it to the other side and get all my different functions that I can move some of these to the main screen but go back to the main screen and touch one of these tiles such as navigation I get to see the expanded view in this case the maps these maps come from the Nokia here navigation system and this is a fully connected head unit system and this is a fully connected infotainment system but these maps are stored locally although they will update over the connected system when i touch the tile again I reduce the size and get back to the main screen if I touch the media screen I get all my different media sources and as it's a connected system I'll have Spotify and Pandora available also 80,000 internet based radio stations will be accessible from this media center the volvo xc90 with that t8 plug-in hybrid system and the speed sensors connect infotainment system comes out next year around the world but we're seeing it here first with the paris motor show