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2025 Volvo EX90 now $3,300 more expensive thanks to materials costs

Without any fanfare, and with sharp surprise to some dealerships and reservation holders, Automotive News reports Volvo upped the price on all EX90 trims by $3,300. The automaker told the outlet that it raised prices on May 1, a month before the EX90 entered production after almost a year of delays. Volvo said it told its dealer body and reservation holders about the increase on June 26, the same day it informed reservation holders that the electric SUV would miss certain features on delivery and be programmed with workarounds for some unsolved issues like battery drainage when parked. The omissions include at least one of the lidar-centric safety systems that Volvo touted as putting the EX90 ahead of the competition when the car launched. The company told one reservation holder the software gaps would be filled in sometime in the "early ownership" phase, the only rational kind of non-answer available to automakers working through EV bugs. We couldn't find any active EX90 forum threads about the price increase, a strange absence for an anticipated vehicle with more than 10,000 preorders. In a Reddit thread from June 27, a commenter writes, "Just got my [EX90] customization email and the price has indeed increased to $79,995 + $1,295 destination fee," making it sound like being surprised by the automaker instead of being informed, such surprise matching a story another potential buyer told AN. And now a note on the EX90 configurator warns shoppers that "Ventilated Nordico is expected to be delivered towards the latter part of the estimated delivery time above." Since there are no delivery times yet, that means no ventilated seats for U.S. buyers for an unknown amount of time.  The new MSRPs figures for EX90 in base Twin Motor form after the $1,295 destination charge are:  Plus 7-seater: $81,290  Plus 6-seater: $81,790  Ultra 7-seater: $85,640  Ultra 6-seater: $86,140  Add $5,000 to these prices to for the Twin Motor Performance drivetrain. Both versions run off a 111-kWh battery from CATL. The first provides a total of 402 horsepower and 568 pound-feet of torque, and a 0-60 time of 5.7 seconds. The performance version is good for 496 horsepower and 671 pound-feet of torque, shrinking the 0-60 time to 4.7 seconds. A company spokesperson named rising materials costs as the culprit.

Automotive April Fools' joke roundup [w/videos]

Happy April, everyone. And we all know what this first day of the month means: April Fools' Day. Today is a national holiday for pranksters with the Internet acting as a serious enabler, and it's always fun to see what kind of vivid imaginations exist out there in the automotive world. The abundance of fake news gets a little old as the day rolls on, but we did manage to get in a few chuckles thanks to a handful of major automakers and automotive news outlets that got into the pranking spirit this year
Some of our favorites this year includes Subaru showing what happens when you combine a bunch of rumors, a Corvette some may have already thought was a joke or Honda providing some in-car innovation circa the late 1980s. Honestly, we're still waiting for official confirmation from Mitsubishi that the recently introduced 2014 Mirage is an elaborate April Fools' joke using a failed design intended for the 1995 Geo Metro. We dug up as much "official" OEM foolishness we could find, as well as some of our other favorites, and posted them all below.

Verizon buys Telogis in connected vehicle market push

(Note/disclaimer: We are owned by Verizon, by way of AOL. This gives us no inside track whatsoever when it comes to news.) With a lot of tech companies and automakers staking their claims in the connected car space, now there are signs that others are looking to move in, too. Today, telecoms giant Verizon announced that it is acquiring Telogis, a California-based company that develops cloud-based solutions for mobile workforces, and specifically telematics, compliance and navigation software used by Ford, Volvo, GM and other car companies, as well as Apple and AT&T. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, although we'll try to find out. Considering that Verizon in 2015 reported full-year revenues of $131.6 billion, the price would have to be very high to be considered "material" and may not be made public for some time, if ever. Telogis in its time as a startup raised a substantial amount of money, just over $126 million in all, including $93 million in 2013, supposedly ahead of an IPO, all from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Back in 2013 when KPCB made its investment (which was the first from a VC firm in the company), Telogis told TechCrunch it was profitable and forecasting revenues of $100 million annually for the year. It's not clear what size those revenues are now, but if it was on the same growth trajectory as before the funding, sales would be around $150 million annually, with profitability, at the moment. Other investors include some very notable strategics: the investment arm of General Motors, and Fontinalis Partners, which also invests in Lyft and was co-founded by Bill Ford, the executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company. Before the acquisition, Verizon actually had a business in fleet management and telematics; in fact, the two companies competed against each other for business from the trucking and other industries. Verizon Telematics, as the business is called, is active in 40 countries. But in a way, Verizon buying Telogis is a sign that the latter may have proved to be the more superior, and the one with the key customer deals.