July 31, 2026 – Volvo Cars has officially pulled the plug on all lidar-powered advanced driver assistance features for its flagship EX90 and ES90 electric models, scrapping years of planned high-end autonomous driving capabilities that were once positioned as a cornerstone of the brand’s next-generation safety architecture.
The unexpected move sent ripples across the global auto tech community, drawing a pointed reaction from Tesla CEO Elon Musk on X. “I did try to warn them,” Musk wrote, doubling down on his long-held pure-vision stance: “Human drivers rely on neural networks and optical sensors — and so should self-driving cars.”
The decision was triggered by the total collapse of Volvo’s exclusive lidar supplier Luminar, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2025 after burning through nearly all its cash reserves and losing Volvo’s critical 110,000-unit annual order. With no solvent partner left to deliver, calibrate or update the Iris lidar sensors, all ongoing R&D work and real-world data collection for lidar-dependent features has been fully suspended.
For early customers in Norway who took delivery of lidar-equipped EX90 and ES90 units, Volvo is rolling out a one-time compensation package of 1,800 euros per vehicle to make amends for the unfulfilled ADAS promises. Due to the original body-in-white structural design, the roof-mounted lidar hardware cannot be physically removed — leaving the high-end sensor permanently fixed in place as a non-functional decorative fixture.
Volvo has stressed that even without lidar, the EX90 and ES90 still carry a full sensor suite of five radars, eight exterior cameras, two interior cameras and 16 ultrasonic units, which the automaker says can deliver class-leading safety performance via its upgraded core computing system. The brand added that it will not revisit the lidar strategy for future models until at least 2029.
